Here are a two of my observations of how Kutztown is trying to persuade us to be while we are students here. First, there was a sign that was posted outside my dorm-room door until just recently when someone tore it down. The sign designated that quite hours in the dorms are from nine to nine, for all of the hard-working students. So, the university is attempting to persuade all of us that students who will be working hard and getting good grades will be going to bed early. However, unlike what the sign presents, quite time generally doesn’t last from nine to nine. Quite time in the dorm does not truly begin until about eleven o’clock. Not to mention the fact that it gets worse on sundays and mondays. Last week, there was an Eagles game, and as I lay in bed at nine thirty with my ear-plugs in, I could still here some of the guys on my floor yelling about bad plays and yelling when their team finally did something good.
Another piece of media that Kutztown has attempted to use in order to teach us how we should be students here was waiting for us as we arrived on move-in day. We were given a poster with a fact on it along the lines that only 70% of Kutztown students have 0-3 drinks per week. Now, in order to get people to hang these posters up, they used bribery. The deal is that they are supposed to have walked around campus and if you had it up, you had a chance to win an ipod shuffle. Also, they are trying to convince the students using a counter-bandwagon method. The theory is that everyone else isn’t doing it, so why should you. These are just two ways that I’ve noticed Kutztown attempting to persuade the student population of how students are supposed to act.
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I am interested in the "bribery" you point out...it complicates the act of communication. As you suggest, people might choose to hang the sign in order to have a chance to win an iPod. In that case, it would be difficult to distinguish between a student who supports the message and a student who is simply playing the system. Yet, if an outside observer were to walk through the dorms, s/he might assume that many students are committed to not drinking. Interesting.
I was also wondering how the issue of quiet hours and other rules were conveyed to you. Were you just given a handbook and told to "read it?" Who first told you about the policies? How do students talk about the rules? Are there "counter-strategies" to evade the rules?
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