Rebecca Black. Photo from web.
I should start this by saying that I sympathize with the people who set up tables in Cro and Harris in order to promote events, sell things, run fundraisers, etc. We’ve all probably been in charge of a table at some point in our lives, and I’m well acquainted with the tense air that an “unsuccessful” booth can emanate. After all, it is somewhat awkward to see dozens of people in Cro shuffling around a cookie sale without anybody actually buying anything, especially when the vendors are probably people you know. I’m totally guilty of this myself; I can’t even recall how many times I’ve briskly approached a booth only to realize I either have no money or interest in the product or promotion. Then I have to look into the anticipating eyes of whoever’s sitting there and conjure up some ridiculous excuse like “Oh I left my wallet in my room, otherwise I would,” or, “The event is Saturday at 6 PM? I’ve got something scheduled then, sorry!”
Why the heck are we so afraid to just say no? Why is it so rude to say, “No, I don’t wish to donate money at this time, regardless of how awesome the cause is,” or “Yes, I know you guys are putting a lot of work into this, but I’m not interested.” Because our communication-saturated culture grows more capable of accessing massive audiences each day, I believe that some general confusion has formed in regards to how being a part of a cause authorizes one to behave. Yes, you are allowed to advertise your cause and fight for it all you want; I’m all for that. However, gathering donations does not give you the right to:
A. Send everybody who doesn’t empty his or her pockets off on a guilt trip.
B. Use coercive and/or disruptive methods in a public space (or any space at all, for that matter) in order to garner more money.
What did he say about causes?! He doesn’t support causes? Causes get things done! Calm down, invisible dissenter. This article isn’t about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of your cause; it’s about the loss of certain social courtesies in the face of fervent activism. For example, I don’t care how much you desire to love and protect animals—if you throw a bucket of cow’s blood on somebody, they aren’t going to change their minds and agree with you. Instead, they’re going to associate your cause with being annoyed and/or humiliated and retreat deeper into their own possibly misguided beliefs, and in the long run that does more harm than good.
I’m not accusing anybody here of doing anything half as traumatic as what PETA sometimes dreams up, and the obvious solution for most people is to simply avoid tables or booths that don’t appeal to them. Despite this mentality, I still somehow managed to clash with the Relay for Life table at Cro last Thursday.
Now, I’m a reasonable guy, which means I obviously had no intention of antagonizing a group of people who are fighting cancer. I don’t like cancer; nothing about fighting it irritates me. What WAS irksome was the fact that an iPod dock was obnoxiously blasting Rebecca Black’s “Friday” at a relatively high volume. I use the word “relatively” because it wasn’t so loud that people couldn’t hear (unless you were standing in front of the table, of course), but it was certainly loud enough that everybody in the area had to put up with it.
First of all, I’m sick of “Friday”—it went viral, it was funny, it got annoying and then we all moved on. Now, here I was in Cro and the song was everywhere, bouncing off the walls and digging its way back into my eardrums, settling inside the comfortable groove that it had once occupied roughly a year ago. It’s no secret that the song makes people want to leap off of things, and this was key to the strategy of the people at the booth. Several signs had been set up proclaiming things like, “Black Friday!” as well as another, which stated that the song “Friday” would be played repeatedly until a donation goal of $100 was met. When I arrived, they had about $40. They didn’t look happy, which was totally understandable, since they had all listened to “Friday” no less than sixty times without a break.
I remember standing in front of the booth and feeling baffled. If the goal was to retrieve donations quickly and efficiently, why would they try to achieve this end by annoying as many people at once as possible, inevitably driving them away from the booth and Cro altogether?
I considered the music to be a distraction and, being with a couple of friends who felt the same way, we approached the booth and asked them if they could possibly turn the music down. An onlooker told us, flatly, “no,” and suggested that if we didn’t like the music then we could either donate, or leave.
No. I don’t think so. I don’t care if getting to $100 means the cure will materialize out of thin air—you aren’t allowed to coerce people into giving you money. This certainly wasn’t coercion in the traditional sense; there was no threat of physical violence and we weren’t yelled at or treated (particularly) rudely, but the point is that my friends and I had to leave Cro once the music became too much. We should never have had to do that, and nobody else should have had to put up with it either. I understand that the people running the booth had the best intentions—I’m sure they thought playing the song would be hilarious—and conceptually, it is a rather funny, clever idea to get people to give money. But the reality is genuinely upsetting.
I’m trying my best not to sound like the quintessential over-privileged Conn kid who would rather people died of cancer than put up with Rebecca Black a few more times, so I don’t want people misinterpreting what I mean. Here’s what I mean: this isn’t a huge school. We have to share the space we have. Disrupting the lives of others, regardless of the cause, is wrong. Refusing to cooperate with others who try to negotiate a compromise during squabbles over public space is wrong. It does nothing other than arbitrarily ostracize people based on their personal decisions and beliefs, and it isn’t fair to anybody who attends this school. •
