Every community has its own code of conduct, its social norms and behavioral mores. NYU Abu Dhabi has a long-held tradition of exchanging complaints about workload as pleasantries during small talk.

Two people meet on the highline, and one of them asks, How are you? In most places, they would receive an answer like, Good, and you? But by the time this answer arrives, the two people have moved past each other and the crisis of awkward conversation has been averted.

While this does happen occasionally, one is much more likely to find oneself in the following situation.

Person 1: How are things?

Person 2: Oh, you know. Busy, busy. I have this big essay due, and I haven’t even read the syllabus yet.

Person 1: I hear you. Work, work, work. Between my essay, my capstone and my printmaking class, I only slept five hours all week.

Person 2: Ugh, totally. Don’t even ask me about my capstone. I have practically been living in the lab for the past two months.

This structure for social interaction is so deeply engraved that students are expected to adhere to it even when they have a completely balanced schedule with nothing to complain about. An anonymous senior student, who did not work on their capstone until after spring break and is definitely not the author, would often reply with, Oh you know, I’m not doing my capstone right now, so I will really just hate myself later, hahaha.

The merit of interactions like these being predictable and codified is that they reduce anxiety. When everybody knows the script, nobody has to worry about what to say. Not to mention that in an environment as stressful as ours, admitting well-adjusted happiness to a colleague running on fumes is simply insensitive and frankly, rude.

What was once simply held to be common courtesy and good manners has recently been codified into a full speech code by the Campus Life Complaint Committee. This change makes it possible for people who do not follow the behaviour prescribed by CaLiCoCo’s speech code to be subjected to disciplinary action.

A statement issued by Samson bin Samuel, newly appointed head of CaLiCoCo reads: “We want to just be clear, that although we cannot make the code apply to all students in the GNU, we have been able to mandate it for NYU Abu Dhabi students studying at Global sites. It is often while away for a semester in Florence or Buenos Aires, with an extremely low academic load, that students start straying away from what is considered acceptable conduct. Instead of waiting for them to return with this problem to the home campus and spread it further, we wish to nip the the problem in the bud.”

Fatima Ling, Class of 2020, is the first student to be affected by the new regulations. “For a first offence, I had to undergo a remote training with one of the CaLiCoCo counsellors. They went through all the things I could still complain about: Not having free Starbucks, having to pay for my own food, and missing out on the balloons to remind me about my housing application for next year.”

In addition to education, the training also acts as an emergency influx of things to complain about. “They scheduled the meeting for 2 AM my time and said it was non-negotiable. So that really sucked, let me tell you about it…” We can guarantee that the intervention was highly successful.

In light of these recent changes, a new, revised letter announcing Vice Chancellor Al Bloom’s resignation will be sent out in the coming weeks. The communiqué will be adjusted so as to reflect the community standards. We have secured an early draft of the first rewrite.