5 Comments

• +9 Former Soph says:

  What did any of these stories have to do with sophs being overworked?

• +1 Sean says:

  I’m curious about this too. How are any of these cases being “overworked”. Maintaining an average of 65% is necessary, otherwise it’s basically telling sophs “you can slack off, doesn’t matter how you do in your studies, you can still be a soph!” Last I checked, sports teams have the same requirement because it’s trying to make a point that school is not about partying, it’s not about helping new frosh or playing in the big game, that’s a privilege one must earn. School is for school, and there are plenty of people who work hard and maintain good grades who can be asked to help introduce frosh to Western, over those who don’t work hard enough. I know school can be tough and sometimes grades are difficult to get by, believe me, I’ve had some classes that I outright bombed but it doesn’t mean I don’t still work hard to try and get the privilege, not that it’s ever worked out….but that’s a story I’m not going to get into here.

  Also can someone explain how the $100-200 t-shirt, suspicious sophs, beds on campus, and the off-campus program is even seen as “being overworked”? I mean Kaleigh, I respect you and I’ve loved some of your articles, but this one frankly appears to have no real backing to it at all. If you want to talk about potential overworking, focus on something like the long hours of work for example. I mean aren’t most sophs having to work each day of O-Week from like 6am until midnight? (I could be wrong, never been a soph so not sure) That I think has a lot more to do with being overworked than engineering sophs not being able to paint themselves purple.

  Or is this entire article a satire? If that’s the case I’d say congratulations, because it is quite an amusing idea.

• +3 C says:

  Sean– I could be wrong, but from reading the intro I feel as if though the “sophs have been overworked since before any of us can remember” may basically mean “sophs have been around since before any of us can remember”, if you get what I mean? Like, it’s implying that they’re overworked now, and they were overworked then, and that sophing and being overworked go hand in hand, but the main point of the article isn’t that– it’s more “here are some events that have been reported on in this period of time”. These events also seem to show a dark side of sophing in that they appear to be challenges sophs have had to face/overcome. Just a thought.

• Kaleigh Rogers says:

  C got it right. I wrote the intro quickly, as I had spent hours researching and putting together the interactive timeline and was up against my deadline, so I didn’t put a lot of thought into the wording of the one sentence at the top of the page. I apologize for any confusion, this timeline was simply to demonstrate some of the more interesting soph-related events the Gazette has reported on over the last couple of decades.

• +1 Molly says:

  What is a soph, and what is sophing? I honestly have no idea.

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