At times, somewhere in the middle of a long block of back-to-back classes, I start to feel restless. I take my fingers off my keyboard, stretch and run my hands under my desk. If I am lucky this is a non-event. However, when I am not lucky, one of my fingers will run over a little damp bump standing out from the smooth wood.
I pause for a second, then jerk back. Thoughts of panic rush through my head. I start wishing there were something I could do, some deal I could make to turn back time just those few seconds. I convince myself maybe it was just my imagination. Finally I take a slow peek under my desk to find a little yellowish blob of used gum where my finger had just been. Great.
In such cases, I am able to escape with only minor psychological wounds by spending the next 15 minutes of class time dousing myself in hand sanitizer. I shudder to think of how those who were not conditioned from a young age to carry 99.99 percent protection as a safety blanket through every experience in life deal with this.
The next side effect is a complete loss of faith in humanity. I find it disheartening that someone would actively worsen communal resources just to spare themselves from some tiny inconvenience — but what really stands out is how widespread this practice is.
It is tempting to attribute this all to the University’s thriving anarchist population — who no doubt want and deserve some credit — but the pure volume of gum that has been deposited suggests that a much larger group of people are responsible.
Most puzzling is how we have gotten to this point. Are some people simply born with an innate desire to make the world a stickier and less sanitary place? Are students being pressured to conform to the lawless back of the classroom counterculture? Is this some subtle ideological stand from the protest-happy student body? Do gum-stickers even know what they’re doing is wrong?
In my state of post-contact fury, I often visualize the offender as a one-dimensional evil figure who delights in the pain of others. Perhaps under the right conditions, though, I too could have become a gum-sticker.
I don’t often chew gum in class because it takes me about five minutes to make my way through an entire pack and the financial implications would require me to give up eating for the most part. If I did, maybe the constant requests to share from acquaintances would gradually make me hard-hearted and give me an impulse to strike back at others. Maybe I would be ridiculed by other gum-chewers for getting up to spit out my gum and eventually give in to the temptation. If we are to defeat the gum-sticker, it is of the utmost importance that we first understand him.
Regardless of the root cause, the University needs to take greater strides in educating incoming students about gum use and etiquette. Like the recent Honor education quiz students had to take, we could be required to demonstrate a functional understanding of how to dispose of gum after it loses its flavor.
As good as it would feel to crack down on offenders with a matching punishment like putting gum in their hair, we need to focus on resolving this issue once and for all. If we simply punish offenders, new ones will pop up to replace them. What the University really needs is a schoolwide rededication to the sterility of our writing surfaces.
Not only would this rely on a collective condemnation of the gum-sticking act, but the would-be sticker should be conditioned to hate misplaced gum to the extent that he wouldn’t dare commit that act most abhorrent even if there was no one to witness it. Until that day comes, I will have to resign myself to inspecting every seat before I sit down.
Christian’s column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at c.hecht@cavalierdaily.com.
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