From: hochstrd@HYDRA.ROSE-HULMAN.EDU
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.college
Subject: Racism at Rose?  What planet are you from (Was RE: omar *)
Date: 16 Nov 1992 18:01:36 GMT
Organization: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Reply-To: hochstrd@HYDRA.ROSE-HULMAN.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: hydra.rose-hulman.edu

Hello fellow alt.folklore.college posters and readers.  I've never posted to
any newsgroup before but with all the recent posts about how racists and just
plain discriminatory all us apparently BORED Rose students are...I feel
obligated to do so.

Maybe I should start out with my, how I know Omar explanation.  I'm currently a
junior here at Rose-Hulman and have known Omar since the first day I came to
school here during Fast-Track Calculus.  Omar lived next door to me in the
Deming Attic and like everyone else I noticed that he was hearing impaired, of
a different nationality, and talked really funny.  But determined not to let
this effect my judgment of him I let my guard down to him.  It's the same
mistake any naive NON-PREJUDICIAL person would have made.

From that time onward I slowly learned to have a very strong disliking for
Omar, although now (from not having to live next to him) this has died down to
just an occasional laugh at the latest events in Omar slightly more than
humorous life.

Why did I learn to dislike the man you might ask.  Well for a few examples try
these on for size.  In the Deming Attic Lounge the TV sits next to the door
facing away from it.  One Saturday afternoon all but two of in Fast Track
(which ammounted to 14 people) were watching a movie on HBO.  Omar proceeded to
walk in the front door...look at all of us...look at the television...step in
front of it...and then proceeded to start changing the channels.  We started
yelling at him "Hey Omar!  We were watching a movie!", but of course he
couldn't here us, especially with his back turned to us.  Finally Jason Baugher
(if I remember right) got up and pointed out to Omar (by getting his attention
first) that the 14 people already in the TV lounge would like to continue
watching the movie.  He said "Oh.." in that way that only Omar can and left the
room.

Surely that's not enough though.  But it wasn't all though.  One of the guys at
the end of the hall had quite a few games (SimCity, F-15 Strike Eagle, Tetris,
etc.) set up on his computer and would let people play them whenever he wasn't
using his computer.  All you had to do was ASK.  Omar didn't ask though, and
grew to the point where Omar was beginning to hog a computer that wasn't his
own.  So Todd rewrote his autoexec.bat file so that when the computer finished
its boot up sequence the text colors came out black on black.  Gee nothing
there.  Given that Omar would more than likely ignore the screen though Todd
also renamed all the .bat files that loaded up his games so that you had to
type in the names backwards to play them.  Want to play simcity, type yticmis
and you're in.  So now if you still wanted to play games all you had to do was
ask and Todd would tell you how.  I still remember when we were all watching
movies and pretended not to pay attention to Omar when he came in, sat down in
front of Todd's computer and typed (in vain) for about 10 minutes before giving
up and just leaving.  Todd was in the room and Omar didn't even bother to ask
him what was wrong with it or even point out the fact that something was amiss
with his computer.

More?  How about all the times we walked into the lounge to see Omar watching
the weather channel with the volume either all the way up or all the way down
with his face a maximum of 6 inches from the screen for seemingly hours on end.
Or how about the fact that our military history prof was once taking bets in
class on how late Omar was going to be that day?  And losing because Omar never
came that day?  Know where I found Omar 5 minutes after class?  Face glued to
the screen in the Deming lounge watching, you guessed it, the weather channel.

Or how 'bout the proof positives.  By the end of Fast Track (even though ALL of
us absolutely couldn't stand Omar after a week) Omar was convinced that only
one of us hated him.  And Chester was proud of this fact!  Every once in awhile
he'd tell us that.  "Omar hates me.  He told me himself!"  Chester was most
likely the most malicious factor against Omar but even he did nothing more than
post office hours on his door stating when Omar was allowed in to keep Omar
from playing games on his Mac SE/30.  To boot Omar had his own MAC!  But if you
need an example of how its a normally accepted thing to avoid Omar whenever
possible.  Most of Fast Track signed up for Maple based Differential Equations
6th hours.  Unfortunately we overed flowed the class.  So they asked if 7
people would like to move to 10th period.  (4:20-5:10PM the last class period
at Rose.)  The sophomores sure as heck didn't want to do that but the Fast
Trackers all looked at each other and up went our hands.  Poor Mike Payne
didn't catch on fast enough and got left behind, but the 7 of us who did
transfer took great joy in saying good-bye to Omar as we left class knowing we
wouldn't be listening to him explain how he did another homework problem in
full confidence he was right and yet be dead wrong.

But that was my Freshman year.  And I don't hate people for any length of time
and I don't hate Omar anymore, I just find him very annoying and strangely
enough very funny.  Most of the funniest people are the ones that don't intend
to be.  Those of us here at Rose have not been posting about Omar because we're
racist or because he's hearing impaired, in fact most of us give him even more
of a chance to get to know him as a person because of that only to find out
he's an egotistical snob.  But even that's not why we post about Omar.  We post
about Omar because Omar is funny.  Maybe the humor isn't intentional on his
part but that doesn't take away from the humor itself.

But one statement from one person is obviously not going to be enough to change
some people's opinion of Rose guys because of that.  So what can we say in our
defense.  Well if you'll read an earlier post by Ryan Moore you'll realize we
don't discriminate based on hearing impairedness, in that respect Ryan is in
the same boat Omar is, and he's one of the guys posting about him.  Racist? 
When did we start picking on Omar because he was Packistani?  Frankly I don't
care where he's from, the guy's still arrogant as all get out.  And even though
I myself am caucasian as are most Rose students (that's what you get at MIDWEST
colleges folks, I don't particularly like it either), not all of us are and
members of minority groups have been reading and posting to the slew of posts
that have been coming from Rose.

And were not making this up either if that's what you might believe.  Omar's
.plan file and the bio posted earlier were written by OMAR himself and were
posted UNMODIFIED.  Don't believe us?  Just
   finger zaidioa@nyssa.cs.rose-hulman.edu
sometime and see what you get.  The posted jive version of Omar's bio is just
that.  It was run through jive (a program that takes certain key words in an
all text file and changes them to other words) and posted otherwise unmodified. 
A copy of his jived bio was sent to Omar, he was sitting right across from me
when he got it and he found it utterly hilarious.  So much so that he even
asked for a copy of jive so he could do the same thing to other text files he
had.

In summation, we post about Omar for one reason and one reason alone:
	FUNNY THINGS HAPPEN TO OMAR AND EVERYONE COULD USE A GOOD LAUGH

And please no stereo-typing Rose students, most of the campus doesn't even know
this news group exists.


Chill Out,
Reuben "Fuzz" Hochstedler
HochstRD@RoseVC.Rose-Hulman.edu

Please send hate mail to:  alt.flame  :)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.college