Swift Kick Central

Students Helping Students

Kansas State University's "Students Helping Students" campaign has the potential to be a national theme for peer-to-peer learning. For those who've had us on campus working with your student leaders, you should recognize the Blender Events and Flash Mobs throughout the video. Enjoy!

What If We DO Succeed in Increasing Student Engagement?

Over the weekend, I was talking with a group of students and advisors from Kutztown University about student engagement. In Swift Kick, we use dance floors to describe how student leaders are the ones in the center of the dance (fully engaged), and the rest of the student body (60-84% according to NSSE) are against the wall, not participating. It looks like this:

  

If the above image represents an oil reserve, the outside area represents the largest pool of potential energy at an institution.

Lots of tools are great at helping student affairs departments better extract 2% more energy from the, already involved, student leaders by automating paperwork etc, but what about the rest of the oil reserve?

The goal should be to unleash more of the potential energy, or in other words, get more students engaged, but what happens if we actually DO succeed? Image tomorrow, 20% more of your campus shows up at your office and wants to get involved...

When I told this to the Kutztown people, there was a look of joyous panic on their faces. Joyous because they succeeded at solving student apathy, panic because they knew they couldn't support a 20% increase in engagement with their current resources. Think about it....

• 20% more office space requests for their group
• 20% more room reservations for events 
• 20% more marketing material needing approved
• 20% more paperwork to fill out
• 20% more groups to monitor
• 20% more people needing an advisor to listen to their love spats
  

With school budgets already hurting, and student affairs budgets pulled as far as they can go, it's NOT possible to support much more engagement on campus with our current model.

If the vision is to see 90%,70% or even 50% of an institution engaged, the ONLY way to do this is to decentralize engagement by building systems that automatically facilitate peer-to-peer connections. It's about rethinking the role of student affairs from the gate keepers of engagement to the facilitators of peer-to-peer introductions.

Your New Best Friend, Social Networking in the First Year Experience (Part 2)

The following is the second draft slice (here's part one) of an upcoming curriculum supplement I am writing for Bedford / St. Martin's press.

Long time readers of this blog will recognize these ideas.  Swift Kick, and Red Rover, have been focused on social capital and engagement for sometime. As the overall curriculum comes together, we're tying all of the pieces into one framework. 

Your comments, as always, are highly appreciated. 

The Dance Floor Theory Engagement Model

Engagement is essential to progress at every level of the student success pyramid. If the student is engaged, then they will, at whatever pace they need, find success. Achieving engagement is a responsibility of both the institution and the student - it's a combination of the design and the learner.

Engagement as a term, and goal, is much more useful than other similar terms, like commitment or persistence, simply because engagement sounds fun. Engagement has a strong element of choice and exploration, where persistence has echos of discipline and drudgery. Engagement, as a goal, can be happily shared by a student.

Teaching students to be aware of their engagement, to expect it of themselves and to manage it to get what they want, is a very powerful addition to the standard curriculum.

An interesting way to explore the dynamics of engagement is by exploring the dynamics of dance floors. Dance floors and college campuses work the same way.

Imagine looking at a normal dance and rating the individual's engagement in the dance by their body language. Rate the engagement on a spectrum from three, meaning the most engaged, to neutral, meaning not yet engaged. (Where neutral is a friendlier way of denoting what comes below one.)

If you could hover above any dance floor with this rating system, you would  consistently see the "3s" clumped together in the middle and the rest forming this pattern:

This self segmentation is simple people stuff. People like to hang out with other people at the same level of engagement - "3s" with "3s" and "2s" with "2s" and so on. There is some natural friction between disparate states of engagement.

If you were to drag a "neutral" into a pack of "3s," the "3s" would attack, and try to get the neutral up to their level (probably freaking out the poor "neutral" in the process.) Most people will increase their engagement slowly, needing time to make connections and increase their comfort, competence and confidence. It rarely works to pop one person from a "neutral" state of engagement to a "3", but, crucially, "neutrals" will watch "3s" for inspiration, even while they get their next new move from the "1s" (because those look a little easier to pull off).

Everyone will likely be effected by everyone else, and the whole system, the whole dance floor, or the whole institution, will be judged by the collective average level of engagement. 

Though it might have been awhile, we’ve all been to good dances and bad dances. A good dance has all levels, but the average is high. At a good dance, a new person is likely to give it a go, just based on following the crowd's average. A bad dance is defined by a low average level of engagement. It's just not fun.  More people will leave a bad dance (and be less inclined to attend the next one).

If, as noted earlier, 60% of students at four year institutions never participate in college sponsored activities, we have a dance where 60% of the people present are not dancing. Our college campuses, on average, are not great dance floors. 

So how do we increase engagement? How do we turn a bad dance into a good one?  We shouldn't be surprised that students, like many of us at awkward wedding dances, look to alcohol as social lubrication, but there is a better way. 

If you ask one hundred people on the street, "What makes a bad dance?" ninety-nine of them will say bad music. They will blame the DJ. Just like students will blame professors or the activities department (as the analogous DJs on campus.) But yet, what I saw, all through junior high, was groups of friends forming circles. If the bond of friendship was strong enough, and the vibe was supportive, it didn't matter what the DJ played, that circle would go crazy to any song that came on.

In short, circles of friends trump bad DJs, or, put another way, social connections are more important than music.

While the DJ's music does matter, as does the professors' curriculum, focusing on social capital of students is a more effective method of increasing engagement and making a better dance floor.

Research on college campuses supports this. The 2006 National Survey of Student engagement put it succinctly: "The most important factor in student engagement is the connections between the students." The dance floor analogy gives us further subtleties. There are crucial patterns to the connections.

The goal is to increase the average state of engagement for the entire campus. We do this by moving one person, one level at a time. In short hand - the goal is simply X + 1.  

To help students maintain their engagement at every level of the success pyramid, education should design systems that use various technologies to provide dynamic assessment of engagement and interests to provide the following:

1) Relevant introductions to other students who are at a similar level of engagement. Neutrals to neutrals, 1s to 1s, etc.

2) Connections to students who share interests, at a slightly higher level of engagement (X+1), for a model and a new, accessible, peer group in which they can develop competence and confidence.

3) Visibility into the most engaged and most competent circles for inspiration.

These dance floor patterns of engagement are how people work. These successful engagement and learning patterns are how education has always worked. What is now new is that we now have accessible technology that can combine publishing, expression, automatic match making, and live individual and systematic assessment to optimize all of these processes.

This is the huge opportunity for social networking. Social networking in general, and the many varieties of web 2.0 services, now allow us to map, teach, and intentionally facilitate the social learning systems of students.

As students publish where they are at now - in words, pictures, or videos - systems can match them with other students who are producing similar content. Various search methods allow learners to easily find "people like them." Assessment can be based on live behavioral data already being provided by students. This new data allows educational stakeholders, faculty, staff, peer mentors, etc. to focus their energy where it is needed.

As students progress, they'll leave a record of their educational path for other students to follow, providing many +1 examples.

The most successful students will continue to publish their content online, where it can serve as an inspiration to an unlimited number of students simultaneously.

While it will take awhile for all of these broad goals to be realized in an experience as simple as an iPod, you may be surprised by just how much of this is possible, and already happening, today.

In the next section, I'll review each of three phases of the student success model and discuss what is currently happening, what can be brought into the classroom, and what future developments will bring.

Making Them WANT To Do It (Apathy vs Engagement)

If you have ever attended a conference with us, you know we enjoy mixing stuff up through the use of Flashmobs and Blender Events, both of which stem from our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training. The goals are to:

1. Have Fun
2. Increase Engagement
3. Build Relationships
4. Create Pattern Interrupts
5. Induce Positive Confusion (one reason why)
   

While some activities are repeated from conference to conference, others come from brainstorming sessions with the participants.

At a recent conference in New York, the associates (a.k.a. people/companies who pay money to attend with the intent of selling their product) were complaining to the conference organizer about the lack of conference attendees participating in the exhibit halls and showcases. As the grumbles of agreement erupted from the crowd, the conference organizer turned towards us and asked if we could send out a Flashmob txt about exhibit hall times and showcase times. Our reply? "No, that's not how it works."

It's not about making them HAVE to do it, it's about making them WANT to do it.

If we were to do what the conference organizer suggested, the Flashmob txt would have been something like this:

TXT A: @ 2:30pm the exhibit hall opens up, make sure you're there!

Instead our txt message was this:

TXT B: In the exhibit hall @ exactly 2:35pm howl to the moon for 10 secs like a pack of wolves. Then stop and walk on like nothing happened.

In TXT B we're making them WANT to do it, like they are missing out if they don't attend. TXT B achieves all five goals from above and, for the purposes of the conference, it also gets more attendees to participate in the exhibit hall.

TXT B also removes the marketing from the activity, which is a common mistake when attempting community engagement. If you're marketing, you're marketing, not relationship building.

The difference between them HAVING to do it and them WANTING to do it is the difference between apathy and engagement.

'Fun' can be the change behavior. If you're still not convinced, check out these ideas from The Fun Theory:

To implement change on your campus, start by creating an "I Wish List..."

• I wish more students would recycle
• I wish more students would walk to campus vs drive
• I wish more students would attend events
• I wish more students would smile
• I wish more students would wash their hands
• I wish more students would...

Next create a list of current solutions for each item:

• Post signs above recycle bins
• Don't do anything
• Flyers, posters, emails
• Don't do anything
• Post signs in every bathroom

Lastly, circle up with 2-4 other people and generate a brainstorming list of creative engaging ways to solve each problem that they will WANT to do. Then try it out and if you really want, you can collect quantitative data to determine effectiveness (e.g. Did more people wash their hands?).

It will take more time to implement some of these ideas, but, to repeat from above, it's the difference between apathy and engagement.

p.s. If your idea is really good, try submitting it to the Fun Theory Award for a chance to win $3,600.

The Value of Leveraging Network Nodes In The College Community

Last spring, I was traveling on a public bus from Laguardia Airport in New York to my hotel on the north side of Manhattan. When I got on the bus at the airport, the bus driver was in a heated argument with someone complaining about being charged twice for the ride. The bus driver was clearly not amused and went from zero to outrage in ten seconds. Trying not to be his next target, I smiled, paid and sat down in the first open seat.

For the next 30 minutes, I watched the driver mumble under his breath and shake his head in a perpetual state of anger. Each new passenger who entered the bus needed to only glaze quickly into the driver's eyes to see he was not happy.

The bus made its way into Harlam at about the same time the local high schools were getting out. I was worried about mixing an angry driver with agitating teens. At the first stop in Harlam, two teens jumped on the bus with big smiles and extended a ribbon-tied rolled-up piece of paper toward the driver.

Congratulations! For all the hard work you do on Bus Route M60, you've been awarded the Platinum Honorary Certificate of Greatness!

The driver didn't grab the paper, so the teens placed it on the dashboard and then jumped back to the sidewalk and darted down the street. Visibly annoyed, the driver closed the door and drove on.

A few streets later, we stopped at a red light. The driver used the pause as an opportunity to reach, untie and open the rolled certificate. Impressively, the certificate used fancy Letterpress printing, color images and even had a foil circle stamp at the bottom. I couldn't make out all the text, but at the top it read,

The Platinum Certificate of Greatness is Awarded to Members of Society Who Demonstrate a Commitment to Making Our Lives Better.

I watched as the driver laughed under his breath and then cracked a smile. It was like a magic spell was released when he opened the certificate because, from that moment forward, his attitude totally changed.

A taxi behind us laid on his horn because the light had switched to green several seconds prior. The bus driver calmly said, "ok, ok. I'm moving."

Amazing! Ten minutes ago he probably would have gotten off the bus to physically engage the taxi driver. When new people entered the bus, he welcomed them with a smile, which inspired the new bus riders to grin back.

I sat there in awe as the entire culture of the bus changed. People started smiling,laughing, and talking.

It's amazing how such a simple act targeted at exactly the right person can have such a large impact on the entire community.

The bus driver was a network node for the community. A node in that he connected with hundreds of people on his route throughout the day. His positive or negative attitude was contagious to the people he came in contact with and it set the tone for the culture of the bus.

Teachers and staff members are network nodes for college campus communities. They come in contact with hundreds of students throughout the day. If the teacher or staff member is in a bad mood, that feeling can be contagious to the students he/she comes in contact with.

As we talk about engaging and growing the college community, let's not forget about the teachers and staff members as the network nodes. What can we do to engage them more? Very few student activities' departments we work with have a formal plan on how to engage teachers and staff members. Teachers and staff members are very much a part of the campus culture and shouldn't be ignored.

The other interesting idea that stemmed from this situation is why would the teens bother to take the time to create such a fancy certificate, wait for the bus to arrive, present it to the bus driver and then run away and not see the end result of their effort? Some might answer that they did it for laughs or for fun or as a dare or class project. All of which might be true, but there is something bigger at play here; the teenagers' tiny action had a huge impact on the community's reciprocal social capital.

As author Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone defines it:

I'll do this for you now, without expecting anything immediately in return, and perhaps without even knowing you, confident that down the road you or someone else will return the favor to either me or someone else in the community. A well connected person in a poorly connected society isn't as productive as a well connected person in a well connected society.

More on the concept of reciprocal social capital and why and how you can create it in your community in my next post. Now get back to work!

At Student Orientation, Don't Forget About Bridging Social Capital

The Bystander Effect is a well-known psychological study conducted by Bibb Latane and John Darley that grew out of the stabbing death of Kitty Genovese in 1964 while eyewitnesses looked on but did nothing to help. According to Wikipedia:

...individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

Robert Putnam's famous book on the collapse of the American community, "Bowling Alone," notes that buried in the Bystander Effect research is also the finding that the amount of social capital within a group plays a large role in determining if someone will help or not. The greater the social capital, the greater the chance they will help. In other words, you're more likely to help a family member in trouble than a totally random stranger.

Social capital refers to the value one gains from the relationships with others (human capital) or things (physical capital). For this post let's only focus on human capital which can be further broken down into:

- Bonding Social Capital: The value one gains from their relationships with close family and friends
- Bridging Social Capital: The value one gains from their relationships with associates
- Maintained Social Capital (Newer Idea): The value one gains from their relationships with people who used to be close family and friends, but are now physically very far away (think transition from High School to College).

In the Genovese story, the lack of engagement by the eyewitnesses likely means they didn't know each other very well and that the level of Bridging Social Capital would've been presumably very low. (Note: I am speculating here as this is not documented in the study.)

Latane and Darley's study highlights the value of simple Bridging Social Capital with a test in which an actor walks down a hallway and either says "hello" to a subject walking in the opposite direction or ignores them. Then a few moments later the actor has an apparent seizure. If the actor said "hello," the subject was quicker to provide help than if there was no communication.

Little interactions, even saying "hello," add up to stronger Bridging Social Capital between people within a community. As Robert Putnam puts it:

Like pennies dropped in a cookie jar, each of these encounters is a tiny investment in social capital.

A theme for new student orientation is to funnel people into student groups as fast as possible because, as Tinto says, there is a correlation between student involvement and retention. This will likely lead to higher levels of Bonding Social Capital on campus because people will create more intimate relationships within the groups.

At the same time, don't forget about the little things that can be done to add more pennies to the cookie jar to increase the Bridging Social Capital of the campus. Sometimes a simple "hello" or smile goes a long way.

Whenever I run a new student orientation, I have student leaders stand at the door to welcome new students as they enter. It's not a big production nor is it glamorous, but the impact in terms of the new students feeling comfortable can be seen right away.

Then, throughout the year, think about what your student groups are doing to increase the level of Bridging Social Capital on campus. It doesn't have to be a big production, but rather something as simple as a Free Hugs Campaign.

Little interactions can have a big impact on student engagement.

How to Make Student Engagement Contagious

In 1969, famed psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a social experiment looking at the contagiousness of engagement. Wired magazine's Jonah Lehrer accurately summarizes the experiment:

In this study, Milgram had "confederates" stop on a busy city street and look upwards at the sky. He demonstrated that when one person was looking up, 40 percent of passerby also looked up, just in case something interesting was happening. (There was nothing to look at, just sky and buildings.) When two people were looking up, 60 percent of passerby looked up. When there were three people, the percentage jumped to 65 percent, and, when there were four people, nearly 80 percent of strangers stopped and stared upwards.

Here's a video of the experiment in action:

In the unrelated setting of the 2009 Sasquatch Music Festival, a replication of Milgram's experiment occurred as seen in the video below:

The first dancer was alone for a long while, but loved every moment. Some would consider him to be a bit socially off. Then #2 shows up, and from his facial expression, seems to look back at his friends as if he were doing it as a dare or joke. Then, #3 shows up and this is where it gets serious. From that moment on, the level of engagement exponentially grows. This is no longer one person dancing, or a dare, or a joke; this is a contagious social movement.

Connecting the ideas together gets me thinking about the role of student leaders on campus. The current paradigm for student leaders is to host engaging activities (e.g. dance party, cookouts, musicians, etc) and then try to get people to participate. Most schools have a very difficult time achieving success with this model. Also in this model, student leaders tend to look like the sole person dancing by themselves looking a bit off from the rest of the social scene as was the case with the Sasquatch dancer. Yes you are called a leader for being #1, but the real engagement doesn't happen until #3 shows up.

In terms of student engagement, maybe student leaders should stop trying to be #1 by hosting the events and instead find the random #1s on your campus and support them by being #3.

Stop creating events that you think are good and look for students on your campus that are doing cool stuff and support them. Stop being the leader and start being the supporter.

Laddering Student Engagement

In Swift Kick's Dance Floor Theory leadership training, we teach students to recognize and be aware of the gradient of engagement on their campus. We teach them to understand the system and its parts so they can improve it.

The simple comparison is a dance floor, where level 5 dancers are often in the middle going crazy while neutral level attendees are on the wall with their arms crossed, often making fun of the 5s.

Pretend you are hovering above a dance floor:

There are many interesting ramifications to this simple analogy, just a few examples:

Students have different needs depending on where they are at on the spectrum. The same thing that helps a five, e.g. louder music, will further alienate someone on the edge.

Students at the neutral stage need the most work to get them in. The jump from insulator (not effected) to merely resistant (can be effected with enough encouragement) is the most challenging.

Relationships create zones of comfort which enable lowered resistance to engagement. These are the dance circles friends always make.

Closeness is critical to increasing engagement conductivity. Proxemics founder Edward Hall puts it this way:

Like gravity, the influence of two bodies on each other is inversely proportional not only to the square of their distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them.

So increasing relational density, by increasing intellectual, emotional or physical closeness, is always a good thing. (Keeping in mind the gradient segmentation, you can't dump a neutral in the middle of a bunch of sweaty fives and expect it to work.)

The college campus works just like this dance floor.

The school's goal is to have more people involved, engaged, experiencing, trying, and growing.

It's a momentum game. People on a dance floor, and students on a college campus, move from absorbing energy from the room to giving energy to the room.

They move from modeling disengagement to modeling engagement.

The exciting question and pursuit for education is this: how can we more effectively move students from needing work (time, energy and money) from the institution to doing work for the institution?

I'm using the institution as shorthand for "group," by the way. The dance floor "room" and "institution" are both arbitrary psychological constructs of group. The web allows us to move beyond the previous physical limitations and define groups very loosely, at almost any size.

These groups can, and will, be based not on location - though that still matters due to Proxemics - but on topic interest and passion similarity.

Even in these groups, the same small, highly engaged core, dynamic still applies.

The same question could be "How can we get more people to contribute to wikipedia?" Why is it only 2% did 73.4% of the work? How can we move more people from simply reading (passive education) to writing (active education)?

How can we hack the system to increase the engagement and participation systematically?

For a great conversation, and example of exactly this fluid grouping complete with 5 level dancers, with localized density, as the core of the group - check out the hackedu conversation on twitter.

2008 Swift Kick Program Calendar

As we close the door on 2008, here's a look back at who we worked with:

01/02/08 APCA Advisors Institute
01/03/08 APCA Advisors Institute
01/04/08 APCA Advisors Institute
01/04/08 Shepherd U
01/19/08 Potsdam U
01/30/08 Emporia State
02/01/08 U. Of Alaska
02/08/08 Western State College
02/10/08 Wesley College
02/12/08 Boise State
02/15/08 27th Annual FYE Conference
02/16/08 27th Annual FYE Conference
02/17/08 27th Annual FYE Conference
02/18/08 27th Annual FYE Conference
02/19/08 27th Annual FYE Conference
02/23/08 SUNY Cobleskill
02/26/08 U. of Missouri
02/26/08 Lake Forest College
02/27/08 Darton College
02/28/08 Bossier Parish
02/29/08 Baker U.
03/11/08 SUNY Rockland
03/12/08 Hudson Valley CC
03/12/08 APCA Nationals
03/13/08 APCA Nationals
03/14/08 APCA Nationals
03/15/08 APCA Nationals
03/26/08 U of San Diego
03/28/08 APCA Northeast
03/29/08 APCA Northeast
03/30/08 APCA Northeast
04/05/08 SUNY Cobleskill
04/15/08 Everett CC
04/16/08 East Carolina U
04/17/08 U of Washington Tacoma
04/18/08 Big Bend CC
05/02/08 San Antonio College
05/06/08 Snow College
05/07/08 Snow College
05/08/08 Snow College
05/12/08 Texas State San Marcos
05/13/08 Texas State San Marcos
05/14/08 Texas State San Marcos
05/15/08 Texas A&M International
06/03/08 ICCSAA Conference
06/04/08 Dakota Association For College Admissions Conference
06/06/08 Norfolk Navy Base
08/08/08 Army Boss Conference
08/12/08 Xavier University
08/13/08 Weber State University
08/18/08 UW Madison
08/19/08 University of Akron Ohio
08/20/08 San Antonio College
08/21/08 Penn State Lehigh
08/22/08 Utah Valley State
08/23/08 Penn State Erie
08/24/08 Schreiner University
08/28/08 University of Mary
08/30/08 Bridgewater
08/31/08 Graceland University
08/31/08 Rivier College
09/06/08 Shepherd College
09/08/08 Johnson and Wales - Denver
09/10/08 US Navy Norfolk
09/11/08 US Navy Norfolk
09/12/08 Winthrop University
09/13/08 Winthrop University
09/14/08 Winthrop University
09/16/08 Southeastern Louisiana
09/17/08 Georgia Southwestern State
09/19/08 Weber State University
09/20/08 Darton College
09/24/08 Clarkson College
09/25/08 ASGA National Conference
09/26/08 Howard Community College
09/26/08 Fulton-Montgomery
10/02/08 Parkland College
10/03/08 Rock Valley College
10/04/08 Coastal Georgia College
10/07/08 Palm Beach Community College
10/07/08 Reading Area
10/08/08 Lynn University
10/10/08 San Antonio College
10/15/08 Mohawk Valley
10/21/08 Pasco-Hernando Community College
10/25/08 ASGA Chicago Conference
11/08/08 Houston Community College
11/10/08 APCA Iowa Conference
11/11/08 APCA Iowa Conference
11/12/08 APCA Iowa Conference
11/14/08 Lord Fairfax Community College
11/15/08 Lord Fairfax Community College
11/17/08 APCA Verona Conference
11/18/08 APCA Verona Conference
11/19/08 APCA Verona Conference
12/04/08 Baton Rouge Community College


Check out our 2007 Program Calendar
Check out our 2006 Program Calendar

Swift Kick Helps "Meh" Become an Official Word

Well ok we weren't the main driving force, but for the past 5 years the term "meh" has been a cornerstone of our Dance Floor Theory Leadership Training and with 200+ college trainings under our belt I feel like we've done our part to help push the "meh" agenda.

In DFT we show student leaders how to segment their student population to allow for better target marketing of events. Our segmentation is based on Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" and Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs.


The majority of students hang out near the bottom of the pyramid in the Neutral Zone. These are the students who will never show up to any college sponsored activity. According to the 2005 National Survey on Student Engagement, the Neutral Zone makes up 60%-84% of the total student body (60% for four-year colleges and 84% for two-year colleges).

To better help understand each stage, we attached humanizing characteristics. For example, the 3s, 4s, and 5s are your student leaders. They are the ones who are throwing the party instead of going to the party. The 2s are what we call your "Free Pizza People." They will attend any event as long as there is something in it for them. The 1s go "hmm" because for the first time they are curious enough about something on campus to make them stop and think.


Then there are the Neutrals, which is just a nice way of saying zero. The Neutrals make up the biggest part of most campuses, but yet are the least marketed to. You can tell Neutrals from the rest because yesterday looks like today and it will look just like tomorrow. Out of all the words we tested to best describe this group, "Meh" stuck the best. Neutrals wake up in the morning and go "Meh," they look in the mirror and go "Meh," they head to class and go "Meh," they sit in class and go "Meh," and so on for the rest of the day. These are your apathetic students and our unofficial rally cry "Meh," is now officially part of the Collins English Dictionary. Stay tuned for the "Meh" induction party... I just hope people show up.