Remember those McDaniel memes? While they may no longer have much of a presence, the issues they highlighted about the relationship between students and the college administration and the city of Westminster clearly are, as evidenced by the tweets and Facebook posts that have surfaced over the past few days.
On Wed. March 28, McDaniel held a Campus 411 in order to address the issue about the relationship between the Westminster Community and McDaniel after a controversial article was printed by the Carroll County Times last week.
The meeting intended to address the article where Westminster residents complained about living in a college town and how the groups of loud, rowdy, drunken students on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are taking the Westminster Police away from doing their job and having to “babysit” us college students.
Many students felt that they were not able voice their own opinions and have turned to Twitter and Facebook to be heard.
Some tweets that were sent to our Twitter page in response to the event included students’ opinions stating “It would have been helpful if Mike Webster wasn’t telling lies to the students and the administration should seem interested.”
Also, a Twitter account titled @McDanielProbz was created a day or so ago so students could tweet and hashtag it so their issues with the campus could be heard.
One of those tweets included “Wanted to make it to the town meeting but I was too busy chugging vodka and pissing in random yards #mcdanielprobz.”
When we asked for students to respond to us about how they felt one student tweeted us saying “The police care more about parties than our safety, smh.”
Twitter isn’t the only place students are voicing concerns. Facebook has a group page now titled “McDaniel Students Speak to Westminster.”
The creator of the page said he made it in order to keep students in the loop about what was going on. In the second of three Carroll County Times articles posted about the tension, they said that no students were present at the town meeting. The argument has been made, though, that the students were not notified of the meeting. Therefore, the page was created in order to keep students involved and know when and where to go to talk to Westminster.
The page has been updated with information about the new Westminster Common Council Meeting which be held on April 9th at 7p.m. at Town Hall, and has also allowed for students to voice their opinions about the topic.
The creator wants students to get involved. Being from Westminster, he doesn’t plan on leaving here anytime soon and wants this issue resolved.
“It’s going to take more than one meeting,” he says. “But students need to go to the meetings to represent McDaniel to the Westminster Council.”
The issue is also not to discuss McDaniel vs. Westminster but to address the cleanliness that comes with living in a college town where there are drunken students on the weekends.
“As a student, this fucking sucks,” says the creator of the Facebook page. In order to maintain this relationship and for students to feel like they are part of both the McDaniel and Westminster Communities, this issue needs to be resolved.
While Twitter and Facebook are ways for students to have their voices heard and post their opinions, it is doing exactly what happened with the Memes and creating a harmful discourse within and about the McDaniel community.
The issue is only getting blown more out of proportion and nothing is being resolved. Things are only being made worse by what students are saying.
So how do we fix this issue? We want to know what you think McDaniel. Comment or write a short letter to the editor and let us know the best way you think we can resolve the issue between McDaniel and Westminster.
McDaniel students: Have you volunteered in the Westminster community? If so, how? Let me know: abb005.