It has been a popular week to be angry.

This week was the first week of housing sign ups which involves choosing a dorm and a room and settling it all with your roommates. This year was also the first time any of this process was done online. We commend Biola for keeping up with the times and deciding that waiting in a long line for hours at a time was not as sensible as putting the process online, assigning random lottery times to choose, having your room and roommates chosen with a few simple clicks and no sun burns or sore feet.

We students even allowed for mistakes, discussing among ourselves ahead of time that putting something this big online was bound to have a few glitches, and telling each other that there would probably be issues. We thought we had prepared ourselves.

But apparently not.

Feeling the heat

As the new process got rolling, the reality of truly random lottery times without priority for class or same floor set in, and people started getting scared. Not to mention the technical loophole which a few students discovered and exploited to effectively cut in line, resulting in the entire system being shut down until the problem could be fixed.

So many people have been getting angry at the housing department for the shutdown of the system before they could pick a room and for getting “screwed over” on their plans because things didn’t happen the way they wanted them to. There is even a Facebook page dedicated entirely to the venting of angry students, many with valid reasons for feeling wronged.

Acknowledging the problems

For me, though, looking at all this more lightly is better than being consumed with anger. Not that I don’t have reason to worry. I am facing the possibility of being forced out of my dorm and away from the roommates I picked because housing allotted rooms and times in a way we weren’t expecting them to. There are plenty of reasons to be angry. There is a plethora of blame shifting that can and has been placed on the shoulders of the housing department. We are a ticked bunch of Biolans. I understand that you want to live in the place you decided on. I understand you feel you have the right to your dorm. I understand that housing acts like there is nothing they can do to accommodate you when you feel like there is. I get it.

Angry for the sake of anger?

However, can we please take a step back? We are attending a school that educates and challenges us in our Christian walk, encourages us to build patience, and sometimes, is that very test of patience. Not to mention that housing is under just as much stress as all of us because they are the ones that have to fix all our problems, both the expected and unexpected ones. Sometimes I think we have it so good here that we take any opportunity we can snatch to get our negative feelings out because, quite frankly, we rarely have real ground for being angry here in the Biola Bubble. So we take anything that goes wrong and blow it up so we feel justified in the rare instance that we get to be angry over an injustice.

Considering a proper response

But we should glorify God with our reaction to this, Biola. Be loving, kind, patient, and gentle with those as Jesus is with you. This is taking what we are learning in our theology classes and bringing it to the streets. The housing system is back up and running now. Even if you don’t get exactly what you want, put it in the right perspective.

Sometimes it takes looking at others problems that pale our problems in comparison in order to see everything isn’t as big a deal as we make it. Chill out. Calm down. Love God.