Always celebrate our Culture of Care

Halfway through a water long island at Kilroy’s Bar and Grill on Kirkwood earlier this week, I glanced down and noticed something odd on the table.

It was a small card advertising IU Student Association and Residence Hall Associations’ Culture of Care Week, an annual occurrence that’s been happening for the last three years. I thought it was strange that IUSA advertised such an important event at a bar not exactly known for fostering its own culture of care.

The Editorial Board of the Indiana Daily Student, a board I have been a member of for the last four semesters, isn’t exactly a champion of IUSA. We haven’t been for quite some time.

Regardless of my disagreement with their greek system favoritism or their shoddy and biased voting system, Culture of Care Week is one thing IUSA has really gotten right in my time as a student at this University.

We come to college as freshmen with the idea that we are adults. Of course, this is legally true.

Mentally, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. We’ve acquired maturity and can be trusted with large responsibilities, to an extent. But in many ways, you cannot prepare yourself for many of the situations you’ll be thrown into once you enter the Sample Gates.

You will feel lonely at some point or another. You will feel worthless. You will be pressured to drink or find yourself in a situation where alcohol is causing your or your friends to make questionable choices. You will, and should, experience sexual
situations.

But none of those events have to have negative connotations. It just takes the knowledge and time to learn something from your peers who have been around the track before. Culture of Care Week’s commitment to educating students about respect, sexual well-being, mental health and drug and alcohol abuse is a very real answer to a problem our school — and many schools around the nation — face every year.

While IUSA and the RHA have joined efforts this week to promote students’ well being, we need to treat every week like Culture of Care Week.

And if you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’re about to graduate or some other excuse, remember that every single student at this school is your peer. These people make up your friends, your classmates and your family away from home.

It sounds like the ending to an after-school special, but remember to care about each other. Sometimes, a few small words of encouragement might mean a huge difference to somebody else.

wdmcdona@indiana.edu
@thedevilwearsdm