As a college student, I mostly try to avoid conflict by negotiation nicely,
but go back to when I was a teenager in high school, I can recall that I had a
major conflict with the supervisor of the dorm in my boarding school.
I was a freshman in high school, and it was my first time going to boarding
school, so as everyone, I had many complaints about the dorm restrictions and
rules. One of the rules was, we were not allowed to bring in blow dryers to our
dorm. The reason for that was, the blow dryer blows high temperature winds, and
may cause potential dangers such as a fire. I would have to agree that this
theory makes sense, but the chance of this accident happening was very small. It
was okay in the summer because it was hot and hair gets try fast, but as it was
getting cooler, it was almost a disaster for girls with long hair to not use the
blow dryer after hair-washing. However, our dorm supervisor was obdurate, she
explained that last year there was a girl who left her blow dryer on unattended
on her bed, and the sheet was burnt.
As we had no hope to overturn the rule,
we started to break it.I sneaked in my blow dryer and
used it, but the blow dryer was really loud when using, so I got caught a few
times. The first time, our dorm supervisor warned me, the second time she
was extremely mad, and believed I was being very disrespectful to her. I explained
that it was simply for my own convenience, and we ended up breaking into an major argument, she tried to grab the blow dryer from me, but I did not let her.
After several similar arguments between students, parents, and the dorm
supervisor, the rule was modified eventually. The dorm supervisor said she
would keep our blow dryers in her office, we might ask for it when needed, and return it
after using. This solution was inefficient as the dorm super visor was in
charge of around 40 students, but it was safe.
I do understand now that the dorm advisor was in charge of our safety,
and wanted to avoid every risky factors, but I think this issue could be avoid
if the rules was reasonable at the very beginning.
Bureaucracy can be a source of conflict, especially if the rules seem unreasonable. Then there is tension of whether you follow the rules or not. I'm guessing that culture matters on this, as to what rules might come into being and on how well they are enforced. Some people, you might think of them as overly pedantic, like to enforce the rules as it seems to give them more importance in doing so. Other people then react as if the rules were more oppressive than they actually because of how they are enforced in practice.
ReplyDeleteAs an outsider who doesn't understand where the sensible solution might be found, here are a couple of possibilities that occurred to me.
(1) Students would have shorter hair.
(2) One or two nights a week the hair dryers would be allowed and there would be monitoring then so no problem with fire would happen out of a student's carelessness.
(3) If there was a gym which had a shower in it, hair dryers would be installed there with an automatic turnoff.
You must not have been the only student at the school with this issue. Reasonable organizations solve such problems with practical if not perfect solutions.
I wonder if the school further changed it's policies by the time you were a senior. A different view of this, from the perspective of economic markets, is that other schools that make the students and their parents happier would emerge if students didn't like their current school. (Though liking a school normally would depend on more serious matters.) Bureaucracy of this sort survives when there isn't competition. Otherwise, it must bend to continue to attract student who are willing to pay the tuition.
Actually this was not a rule of our school, it was just a rule set by the dorm supervisor of the floor I lived in. I transferred by the end of my high school freshman year because I did not like boardig school. I believe the school did install blowdryer in the bathroom later as they want to keep their students convinient and safe,which would be consistent with economic concepts.
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