I am still surprised that we, this including food production and service professionals and academic mentors, came up with the idea of having a hot wing-eating competition.
The notion of having students overeating to health-threatening limits and making it appear as an accomplishment that turns individual taking part in such a performance into achievers, makes me think that we are not supporting values that can be related to civility, education or urbanity. But, what I find most surprising in this initiative, was the thousand dollars reward, to the biggest achievement in the actual contest, at a time when resources on campus are said to be scarce.
As teachers and counselors we can take such a happening as a prompt that tells us to review the nature of leisure and entertainment that we promote among Murray State students.
Lets hope that in the future, we think twice before promoting gluttony on campus.
Letter from Leon Bodevin, assistant professor of Spanish.