ON CONFRONTATION

One of my co-workers/friends has said he is in a very confrontational mood today. His building has been...active?...lately, with broken windows, hate graffiti, people shoving RA's, police not responding to what allegedly sounded "like gunfire." Just a bunch of terrible stuff in the past week or so.

Now, my building has not been perfect angels all year, but they've only had one incident that even held a candle to my friend's building (when students pulled down part of the drop ceiling in a common room). He and I had completely different responses to these actions.

As mentioned above, he is in a "confronting" mood. I was not; I was in a disappointed mood when all of this happened. Part of this is my "Mr. Neutral" personality, and part of it is that occasionally, getting angry and confrontational invites further reprisal. It takes two to tango, and I am not willing to dance with these foolish students.

For example, a few months ago, a group of us were at a movie. A young man in the row in front of us was texting; one bearded member of our group said "Put it away, man." Now, he said it in kind of a jerk-y manner (not too terribly jerk-y, but a little). I think if he had been very confrontational, very jerkish about it, it would have caused the texter to be kind of a jerk back - to re-jerk*, if you will. The situation would have escalated from there. Conversely, if someone with a Brad-like personality had said "Excuse me, could you stop texting during the movie?" the response would have been one of two things - either putting the phone away and apologizing or a snort and ignoring of the request. In this instance, I think my bearded big-nosed friend found the right balance between being commanding and requesting.

So I worry for my friend tonight, as he is on call, and has said he will be looking for opportunities to confront students. I don't know that anything terrible will happen tonight; too many of these students deal with their authority issues in secret, by spitting on police cars when the officers aren't around, for example. My concern isn't for him getting in a fight or anything tonight; just that these students will rebel in different ways that result in damage to his personal property. It's up to him to find the line between command and request; he is certainly capable of walking that line...it's whether or not he chooses to walk it that I don't know.

*I'm very proud of "re-jerk." What a great word.