Cutting in line? Carroll’s Unwritten Rules

Nobody handed us a rulebook, but Carroll College students know the unwritten rules, usually from watching someone break one.

Take the dining hall line. 

Someone spots a friend near the front and slides in beside them, and everyone behind them sees it. Nobody says a word, but the looks do the enforcing.

“Nobody wants to be the person who cuts. Everyone sees it,” said Rudy Zurcher, a sophomore engineering major from Bellingham, Washington.

The fix is simple: walk to the back and wait your turn like the rest of us.

Then there is the photo. When a group lines up for a shot in front of a building, you do not walk through it. It is a small thing, but you wait, or you take the long way around.

“It’s not a big deal to wait. It’s a big deal to ruin someone’s shot,” said Roy Mendoza, a senior finance major from Logan, Utah.

Some rules are about space. Others are about manners, and those might be the ones we follow best.

Hold the door for the person behind you, even if you only know them by face. Do not claim a dining hall table with a backpack when the line is out the door. 

Keep your voice down in the library, even though it’s big, because someone nearby is probably panicking about an upcoming deadline.

“I mean, I’ve been the one trying to study while people talked, so I get it,” said Madi Farrignton, a sophomore psychology major from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Say “hi” on the walkway. It costs nothing, and it is one of the reasons a small campus feels like one.

Then there are the classroom rules. Pick a seat in the first week and stay in it. If a stranger sits there, we may not say anything, but we will all think about it.

“One year, in the middle of the semester, probably like week 11, someone decided to sit in the seat I sat in for whatever reason, and it killed my mood; read the room,” said Sarah Goodman, a senior, communications major from Spokane, Washington.

None of this is in the student handbook. No one gets a ticket for cutting a line or a lecture for talking in the library. The rules work because we all agree to follow them.

That might be the most Carroll thing about them. We do not enforce them with signs or policies. We enforce them with a look, a small shuffle to the side, or a quiet thank you for holding the door.

So the next time you are tempted to park yourself in the middle of a walkway, remember that someone is trying to get through. It takes two seconds to move, and everyone gets to class on time.