My #stonehillprobz

I wanted to fire off this post before my tour at 2:30, so I don't have a ton of time. Probably not as much as I'd like, but that means that I have to work and think quickly, which is good, because I'm agitated. As many people might or might not know, I have a Twitter. I also go to Stonehill. A by-product of those two facts is that every once in a while, I'll see #stonehillprobz pop up on my Twitter feed. And sometimes out of curiosity, I'll go see what people are complaining about. A priest riding a bike. Our sprinkler malfunction issues. Emails. Slow wi-fi. You get the idea.

WHAT THE FUCK, EVERYONE.

Sorry if I sound higher and mightier than everyone, which isn't my intention, but can we care about something that matters!? Can we complain about something that actually means something to this community? Who cares if there's a priest riding a bike. Is he not a person, just like I am a person? If I were riding a bike, would that be a problem? Sure, maybe everyone's being clever and tweeting about trivial problems that happen at Stonehill, but why is no one tweeting about what makes us thrive as a community and a society? Why is the It Needs To Get Better movement not on #stonehillprobz? Why aren't bias incidents there? How come I don't see anything pertaining to the nature of Stonehill, and the soul that this community has?

A couple of self-limitations that I'm aware of:

• I'm not saying that I have nothing to complain about. I have something right here, and I'm letting it all out on the table. Because this matters to me. If you really think that it's a fundamental problem with Stonehill that our sprinklers don't work, then you're not seeing the big picture.
• I understand that the couple dozen tweets I read is not a representation of the Stonehill population. I know a damn lot of people here that really care about many things, and I'm glad to know them.

But come on. Every single time I talk about Stonehill, I talk about how much I love this place and how good it treats me. You have to let it treat you this good. If you sit idly by and punch out 140 characters about the long lines in the Dining Commons, then nothing's going to happen. You're cutting yourself short on all that this place can do for you. When you actually go out into the world, whether it be on campus, in the community, internationally, or wherever, and do something, you start to eliminate those problems. Real problems, I mean. The best thing about Stonehill is its community. You go around and ask a random sample of 100 students what their top three things about Stonehill are, and I'd be surprised if any more than ten didn't mention the word community. All I ask, or implore, at this point, is this -- if you're going to have a problem with some aspect of Stonehill, make sure it's something you actually care about. Make sure it's something that matters. If you genuinely care about our sprinklers not working, then fine. That matters to you, and I respect that. But if you're just calling something a problem because you can, or because you feel like it, then please don't. You're discrediting all that this place is, and what everyone has done to make it exactly what it is. And to me, there's no bigger discredit than making Stonehill anything less than the incredible place that it is.