Be Good. Be Orange.

Submitted by Lindsay White

Being orange at Oregon State University (OSU) does not just mean that you wear a Beaver jersey to a football game or wear a Beaver sweatshirt when going to your class, it means much more than that.  It means having pride and being compassionate for your school and your fellow students when you are not only on campus but also in your community.  Being orange means having compassion for other Beavers when you are at school and when you are at home during breaks as well.

Having compassion for another person is defined as having sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.  I believe that once a person is able to feel compassion for others it is much easier to feel compassion for themselves also.  Being orange to me means that we as students at OSU are able to feel compassion for one another and not criticize one another, but are able to bring one another up and make each other feel good.  I understand that there are students at OSU that are unable to feel compassion for their fellow class mates, but I hope that one day they will be able to feel the way that I feel for my fellow students at OSU.  I feel like students attending OSU are just as important and deserve as much respect as me, and I hope to show that in my time at OSU.

One of the core values of the strategic plan at OSU is social responsibility.  This relates to compassion because according to the strategic plan we contribute to society’s intellectual, cultural, spiritual, and economic progress and well-being to the maximum possible extent.  This is showing compassion because OSU students are able to help one another when help is needed.  An example of social responsibility at OSU is when campus became non-smoking.  This may not have been great news for cigarette smokers on campus, but I would bet that they could understand why non-smokers would want this to become official.  I would hope that smokers at OSU would be compassionate towards non-smokers because they can take their smoke breaks a few blocks away from campus and then be respectful.

I want “be orange” to mean that students and alumni of Oregon State can feel compassionate and sympathetic for one another.  I want students to respect me as a fellow Beaver and I want to feel compassion for other students when they need compassion.  I want students and alumni of OSU to feel a sense of pride from their school and when they tell their friends and family away from campus what being orange means I want them to be proud of the people that they spent their college years with.