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A new genocide is killing society
 Kristen J. Kubisiak -- Staff Essay
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I hate excuses. And unfortunately, excuses prove a tool as necessary for college students as books and freshly sharpened pencils.
Let's face it, all of us, at one point have used an excuse for something��missing a homework assignment, not going to an important meeting, not returning a phone call��we've all done it. Seemingly without consequence.
The problem is not the excuses themselves, but the abuse of excuses.
Excuses are the number one killer of accountability in individuals in society.
To be accountable, as stated by Webster's New World College Dictionary, is "to account for one's acts; responsible."
Whenever someone intentionally creates an excuse, that individual's level of accountability drops, and the sum total of unaccountable individuals in society rises.
The problem of having unaccountable people in society is simple. Societies are groups of people that are interdependent on one another. When one person isn't accountable, it affects everyone else in the society, and this is not without consequence. For example, one person doesn't show up to work repeatedly because he or she is "sick." For the people that do show up for work, there is the same amount of work to be done and one less person to do it. As a response, the people who have to pick up the slack begin to feel bitter, angry, or "fill-in-the-blank-some-other-negative-emotion-here." Soon these people will start making excuses of their own, not show up to work, or have a lower performance level at work. The whole business suffers as a result.
The same is true for college group assignments.
There is always ONE person full of excuses: I work. I am so busy with other classes. I am taking 500 credits, I work 70 hours a week, and am president of such and such club, team captain of such and such team and I volunteer.
Should you be penalized because of one person's inability to set limits to their involvement and construct a more manageable schedule? That is another debate.
The point is, as long as some people are overextending themselves, and others are being downright lazy, the people in the middle who are being accountable, will be saddled with more work trying to keep society together when the overly busy and indiscriminately lazy start laying on the excuse.
Ultimately, when you peel away the bull people give as excuses, and most of the time, let's not mince words, it is bull, all the is left is someone to scared to wholly commit to anything or take responsibility for their actions.
Now I am not saying that there are no legitimate excuses. Because there are. And people would be more willing to pick up the slack when legitimate excuses happen if they hadn't already been taken advantage of so much when people fed them illegitimate excuses.
Another problems for the people in the midsection of the accountability spectrum, are what I like to call, the "2 o'clock" people.
The "2 o'clock" people are those individuals who are willing to be accountable but only until a certain time, or "2 o'clock."
The problem with these people is that they will give you absolutely 100 percent only until it is no longer convenient for them. Then they disappear without a trace and leave whatever jobs are left unfinished in the capable hands of the remaining accountable individuals.
I guess this is the result of a society that has come to revere and place on a pedestal the concept of "individualism."
When people can come to terms with the fact that "pulling your own weight" and keeping a cohesive society afloat are not efforts detrimental to individualism we will all be better off.
This school year, I encourage everyone to step up and be responsible for themselves and help stop the genocide of accountability in society.
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