Oh dear. Amazing Thailand’s ‘fun-filled’ academic rituals are all over the media once again. Lock up your daughters, board-up your boys, this year’s cyclone of carnage is a category five. No, I’m not talking about a tropical typhoon or a Pacific tornado; this issue’s BIG STORY is the annual ‘rab nong’ or college ‘Fresher’ festivities.
It seems the more gentle exchange of garlands and scented water splashing traditions have, as usual, been widely ignored as the country’s sensation-seeking news sleuths have zoomed in on a particular welcoming ceremony that was so warm, it left some of the new students with third-degree burns.
While your sympathy has to go out to the victims of this latest horrific hazing, it makes you wonder what course of study they had enrolled on in the first place? Do we have any colleges where one can actually major in being a moron?
It is worrying that, as the nation’s youth embark on a journey of knowledge that will prepare them for the challenges ahead, so many seem to have left the lessons already learnt in high school behind:
Q: Drugs? A: Just say NO!
Q: Unsafe sex? A: Not on your life.
Q: Roll on a bonfire? A: Oh, okay then.
It appears that this year’s Semester of Stupidity slogan is: “Forget everything you have ever learnt and simply do anything any older student tells you to do, no matter how senseless, scary or life threatening.” The Faculty of Fear motto is: “Leave your brain at the college gate before you enter and pick it up when you make it through to your sophomore year.” This is assuming, of course, that some ‘self-important’ senior hasn't already stomped it into pulp.”
Your college days are supposed to be the best days of your life, when you officially leave childhood behind and head off in search of qualifications that will enable you to do your best in the highly competitive adult world. Sure, to get ahead in the grown-up jungle, you will, without doubt, have to say “yes” to a lot of things you would not normally agree to. But a big part of growing up is also about finding the courage to say ‘NO!’ sometimes. Start now by telling the bullies in your college to take their silly, childish, dangerous pranks and stick them somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine.
If you see this kind of punishment as the price for acceptance, just ask yourself, do you really want to belong to such a brainless herd of buffaloes?
