GUEST COLUMNIST: Can we have a little civility, anyone?

A few weeks ago, I endured a 12-hour Greyhound bus ride home from Boston. Yes, I would agree, no sane individual should subject themselves to such agony. I often tell people that if I'm really bad in my lifetime I'll be riding around hell in a Greyhound bus. Fortunately, this masochistic experience has at least allowed me to come confidently to one conclusion: Civility is becoming a thing of the past. Admittedly, examples set by the drivers and riders of Greyhound buses, as reputable as they may be, should not serve as the sole basis for my societal theories. They did, however, confirm creeping suspicions I have been fostering over time. The trip began with the Nazi bus driver. This 6'2" brutish woman treated riders like little peons out to swindle Greyhound and challenge her almighty authority. My first encounter with her was not pretty. I was transferring buses in New York's Port Authority and made an agreement with a driver to hold my belongings on the bus so that I could go into the city during the two-hour layover. When I returned to get on the bus, the Nazi bus driver appeared, noticing that I had not gone through the "normal line," and immediately began barking me out. The other bus driver, who had made the deal with me, tried to intervene. There was, however, no logical reasoning with this woman seeking dictatorship over all. I tried to find a common ground with her. I sought out empathy: "Listen," I said, "I'm really sorry about the confusion. I honestly was not trying to sidestep any rules." I had deviated from Greyhound's conventional practice, and she felt compelled to think the worst of me, making me pay big time. I was forced to wait another hour in Port Authority surrounded by my suitcases. I finally boarded the next bus, determined to survive this trip with a decent attitude. That woman had to be just a bad apple. Not quite. As I was sitting on the bus, contentedly reading my Newsweek, I noticed an older crippled woman making her way to a seat rather slowly. The man behind her, who was riding Greyhound because his Harley was in the shop, was losing patience quickly. He yelled out, "Lady, are you gonna move anytime soon or am I gonna have to move you?" I looked around and you could see the smiles appear on the faces of people in the long line waiting behind her. No one even considered assisting this struggling woman to expedite the process or, better yet, for the sheer sake of kindness. Failing to move from my seat, engrossed in the spectacle and beginning to sense a societal trend, I was as bad as the rest. The incivility did not end there. As we stopped to eat at the ever appetizing Roy Rogers, the bus driver adamantly exclaimed that we had 10 minutes to be in and out -- not a minute more -- and could not go to the bathroom inside the restaurant since there was one on the bus. I thought he must be joking. People always take longer than the time given, and who goes to the bathroom on those Greyhound buses? That's even more masochistic than riding the bus. Everyone, except for one man, was back on the bus within the time allotted. While this man's girlfriend made his absence known -- he was in the restaurant's bathroom -- the driver went ballistic and refused to wait. There was a literal brawl on the bus. As we were driving away the girlfriend began clutching the keys of the driver and screaming at him to stop. There was swearing, name-calling and, worse, a half-hour delay for everyone else because these two individuals could not civilly work things out. One might wonder, as did I at first, why I did not come to my realization about civility earlier. Perhaps up to that point I had been somewhat oblivious, desiring to exercise hopeful idealism. But the Greyhound's confined quarters seemed to magnify society's growing problem. The commission has come to agree that much of the "ideological extremism, polarization of contemporary public culture, the thoughtlessness of social behaviors, the lack of strong leadership and the tendency towards the super-fragmentation of communities, may be the result of the intrusion of mass market forces and values into areas of social, cultural and political life from which they were formerly, largely absent. A "culture of immediacy" has developed, leading people to be less concerned for their community and others. It is almost as if we are becoming desensitized to a trend of inconsiderateness toward others and unwillingness to compromise. People are beginning to anticipate disagreement. What, then, does this mean for you? Penn administrators, faculty and students can conform to the norm or they can complement the work Rodin is undertaking and allow Penn to set the stage for measures other universities will aim to replicate. Admittedly, there are some students who load computers with viruses and pornography; who recklessly ride bicycles, banking points for how many pedestrians they can knock off; who refuse to lend a hand for fear of upsetting a precious exam mean; and who ignore students struggling to scrounge up an extra dime to print up the last page of a paper that was due 10 minutes before. But, for as many bad apples there is a significant number of those who do step up. I, a College student, have typed this entire column on a Wharton computer. An empathetic Wharton student -- imagine that -- whom I had never met before, took pity on me and allowed me to use his account when my computer crashed and none of the labs were open. Folks, there is definitely hope. With the new academic year upon us, it is good to remember that while we are celebrating a nice emancipation from our parents, we are not in a world of our own. Consideration counts.

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