👄Tales from college; going the other way and behavioural economics.

👄Tales from the classroom; The virtues of going the other way and behavioural economics. 


I was once in a policy maker departmental meeting at school when a notorious junior student in his third year came in picking on another student, shoving him and shouting in his face. I am not sure what the argument was about, but the fourth year student was suing for peace. The more he tried to pacify the other student, the more he attacked him. He was trying to emphasise that the other student was weak and that was why he wouldn’t fight him back. The president refused to call the aggressive student to order simply because the fourth year student seemed not to be popular. He was bigger and taller and was á prominent Christian Union member. Us freshmen were confused at the development. 

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A different final year student stood up and told the aggressor that he was being rude for 1) attacking a senior student in front of his seniors and 2) for disrupting the departmental meeting 

and that’s when the majority of students sided him and told that boy to shut up and sit down or leave. That’s when the president supported everyone else. 

It seemed that student had been spoiling for a fight for no apparent reason other than to let people know he had joined a bad gang; a vile group who tried to stab the final year student later that evening after the meeting. 

But the final year students were basically a group of young men, some of whom were married with families. They managed to catch two of them, beat them up and call the police on them. The third year student got away. The final year student was stabbed once and we spent the following year avoiding that third year student and glaring at him in collective community disapproval. I think he dropped out from the pressure or the school authorities let him go eventually when the security caught them up. The final year student wore a plaster on his wound of honour for a couple of months before he graduated with honours. And we know for sure that other kid was planning to corner that fourth year boy and probably murder him with his gang for absolutely no reason. That young man saved a life that day. And as we walked home that evening, we overheard them discussing everything and how they had planned it so well that the only reason they caught the two strangers was because they weren’t familiar with the area like the student who got away and looking at the indications of how bold they were, they probably had powerful friends and letting the police arrest them might have been a mistake. Save a life today. The Nigerian, stolen mandate should be returned because of that boy. Also, we don’t like bullies and vile déjà vus. Simple.

 Lord have mercy. 👑






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