Teacher rips money in class?
Last Monday, as I sat half awake, I watched my professor rip a $1 bill in half before one of my morning classes.
She explained that she used this sort of scare tactic as a way to wake us up and get us more in tuned with her lecture. It was rather effective. Immediately, 20 students sat upright in their chairs, aghast and began vocally protesting what she had just done.
“What’s the big deal?” she had said. “It’s just money.”
To add insult to injury, she told us that occasionally she would use bigger quantities of money – $10, sometimes $20 bills. She then resumed with her lecture.
As the squabbles of my classmates died down, I looked around the room. A few students were still somewhat asleep, some others were laughing at the events that had just unfolded. I felt as though I was the only one who was truly angry at what had just happened.
The same day she ripped up money in the classroom was the same day I received a $300-plus billing statement from the university telling me that if I didn’t pay up, I couldn’t register for next semester’s classes.
Students here, on average, pay something over $20,000 to attend Central Michigan University. That is not including the price for books, parking passes, groceries, and clothing – if necessary. Students who I have talked to are scrambling to make ends meet, working multiple jobs just to pay rent. Although some of us are fortunate enough to get reimbursed through financial aid, not all of us are.
We’re college students. We’re young and broke, but we’re trying our best. And to have a teacher rip up money right in front of you and ask you what the big deal is?
There is such a gap, both financial and social, between those who have money and those who need it. To people who have the privilege to not have to care about money – great. I am sincerely happy for you. But to those of us who have to work, to fight tooth and nail through the education system for the chance at a scholarship or just slog through the torrent of student loans, that dollar is a slap in our collective faces.
That dollar represents our blood, sweat, and tears to make it to where we are today. And to have it ripped in half in front of us is almost like saying that we did our best, but our best just wasn’t good enough.
Yes, it was just a dollar. But to someone who doesn’t have a whole lot, that one dollar can go a long way.
