Seniors should endure one last test—of humanity

A month from now, a whole new batch of people will parade into the real world with that $120,000 meal ticket known as a "Yale degree." Unfortunately, some of them will be assholes.

But we can stop them. There's no reason they have to reflect badly on the rest of us. It would be quite simple—a test verifying that each departing senior is not among our handful of assholes. With some carefully implemented secret observation, they can be weeded out and stopped. It will be the ultimate asshole karma when they are astonished to find—oops!—their name skipped over during Commencement.

You know they're out there. Some trash the work that students slave over, everything from posters for organizations to entire stacks of Monday's Yale Daily News. Others pound on windows as if the only job of a college's first floor residents were to open doors for those without gate keys. Most play deafening music until 3 a.m. every weekend without so much as a "sorry" to their neighbors, and a few back out of extracurricular obligations without even a "goodbye" to the people they let down. Some of the worst are thieves—even taking laptops and cameras, the contents of which may be irreplaceable. What all assholes have in common is that they are disrespectful, dishonest people who act like they're doing you a favor by enduring your trust and kindness.

One walked into the yearbook office last week, claiming he had never received the freshman facebook he'd ordered. I handed him one and turned my back, only to discover him trying to steal a second one. The freshman, upon being caught, didn't apologize or acknowledge his wrong. Instead, he tried to blame me—I hadn't looked his name up on a list, so I obviously didn't care if he took another. Perhaps it's not his fault. Perhaps he's unfamiliar with this crazy "trust" thing people talk so much about. Hopefully, he'll pick it up over the next three humbling years.

But if he doesn't, our test will be there to stop him and others like him. Although people are fond of making derogatory generalizations about Yalies—I heard one asshole comment that "the only people not going to Myrtle Beach are nerds, and that's about 95 percent of Yale"—the simple reality is that most Yalies are kind-hearted people. Watch as they make room for you in the crowded dining hall, as they smile in passing on the way to class, as they hold doors open for you, as they buy alcohol for your parties. We shouldn't let a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch.

The Chronicle of Higher Education says that Texas, Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey, Georgia, Maryland, Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and New York all have or are producing academic tests that high school seniors need to pass before they get their diploma. But as exit exams gain in popularity, Yale needs to stay ahead of the curve and test whether a given student is really human.

I'm well aware that the world at large is full of assholes. But there's no reason that Yale should be contributing to the problem. We can set an example: a politically correct "Yale man" for the 21st century.

The asshole test will be a long time in materializing, I realize, especially at Yale's snail pace, which can only be dubbed pro-gress when viewed in geological time. But there is an interim solution. How about you assholes just pretend people are watching? That your future is on the line? Because they are and it is. And maybe, just maybe, you'll find that being a good person is almost as much fun as being an asshole.

Kushal Dave is a bitter, bitter sophomore in Pierson.

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