WHETHER IT BE congressional outbursts, interrupted award speeches, or even the average YouTube comment, there’s no doubting that we live in an intermittently rude society. Even on the microcosmic level of our own school, an irresponsibly messy kitchen looms, and attempts at retribution only come in the forms of group punishment and obnoxious e-mail chains that everyone seems to want a part in.

The kitchen isn't the only place where some students have shown a lack of regard for others. Gargoyle photos by Maritza Mestre (click to enlarge)

This lolcat poster in the kitchen says: "I can has cheezburger? Only if you clean it up!"

From what we understand, these incidents all relate. The main issues at hand boil down to a core lack of respect for others and the pervasive problem of an inflated sense of self-worth among many of the involved persons.

When you refuse to pick up after yourself in the kitchen, it says that you lack respect — not for the building, but for your co-inhabitants, be they fellow students just trying to heat up a lunch, or faculty members who are required to make sure that this building stays functional.

Your lack of responsible actions says, “I do not care enough about you all to make minor efforts to not make your lives any more difficult.”

While it is certainly acceptable to not care about your schoolmates or teachers, making other people do more work for no reason is undeniably impolite, and it is understandable that affected persons would (and most likely should) take offense.

But how, exactly, should our hypothetically offended individuals react? Particularly when no one person has been individually slighted, but rather a group of people has not quite gotten its way?

The idea that one person’s beliefs are important enough to demand a large audience without invitation is not much better than the idea that leaving your garbage around for others to deal with is acceptable behavior. What makes Kanye West’s opinion valid enough to interrupt a speech for an award he wasn’t even nominated for? Why do we think the obnoxious things we have to say are important enough to e-mail the entire school about?

We’re not trying to blame any one person. Nearly everyone suffers from these faults at some point or another. Instead, we’re just commenting that, although we live in a nation of individuals, even Ayn Rand (pop-libertarian philosopher, founder of objectivism) believed that no one person is worthy enough to infringe on others.

The kind of world most of us want to live in involves respect. In many settings, we find ourselves part of a group dynamic, and it’s important to realize that our own personal wants don’t trump the well-being of the group as a whole. It’s the little things that either get under our skin or stand out.

Now, you don’t necessarily have to run into the kitchen first thing and start picking up every piece of trash you see. Just, as a community, help out enough so that things never get to that point.

And when things don’t go the way you want, that’s OK too. Remember that the world isn’t actually out to get you. Everyone is going through something, so when you make something into a big deal because you think it impacts you personally, it just makes you look insensitive and ignorant.