Respect, courtesy never outdated

Yesterday after a long day that was turning into an even longer evening, I boarded the bus to get to my car. I boarded and asked the driver about the route she takes. She politely answered my question and then responded with a query of her own.
“Tell me something,” she asked. “Why don’t people here speak?”
At first I was confused. I thought every time I ride the bus I always say thank-you to the driver and I noticed that most of the other riders do the same.
Before I could answer another student boarded the bus, looked directly at the driver then at me said nothing and sat down.
“See,” the driver said, “That is what I am talking about.”
Throughout the rest of the ride I observed the same thing with a few exceptions. As I thought about it I questioned something that Louisianans in particular and southerners in general pride themselves on – “Southern Hospitality.”
My understanding of Southern Hospitality is that it creates a culture where people are generally warm, polite and friendly. If this is the case then it would be in keeping with this custom to speak to fellow students, transit operators, faculty, the chancellor and everyone else at LSU. Based on my encounter with the transit operator, clearly, this is not the case. To me, it seems that the true mark of hospitality and politeness would be how well people treat one another, not how well they treat strangers.
I imagine that people may take offense to this article and cite the people they speak to on a regular basis.
Perhaps it is Ms. T in the Tiger Lair in the Union or one of the custodians in your residence hall. But if you can name all of the people you speak to on a regular basis on one hand, you are not speaking to everyone.
As students, we often think that everything at the University begins and ends with our existence and that without us LSU would be nothing. This is true. But we are only one very integral part of a very complex system. It is the people we most often overlook who really make the University what it is. They are also the most unappreciated and most often overlooked. It is the custodians, building engineers, facility services workers, support staff, bus operators, transit drivers, managers and others that make the university work and work well.
Just think. If the chancellor had to clean his own office, answer the phone, select all of the scholarship recipients, unlock all of the doors, turn on all of the lights etc., he would never have time to run the University.
He would be too busy just keeping it open. If we had to handle all of our own paperwork, make our own reservations on campus, and submit our own grades, some of us would never graduate. It would take the first four years just to figure out how to schedule.
I know that as students we become so consumed by what is going on in our own lives that we forget to become genuinely concerned with the lives of others. Between reading, studying, working, enjoying college and occasionally sleeping, some of us barely have enough time to eat. It could also be the case (though I doubt it) that we spend so much time doing community service and raising money for philanthropies that we forget that helping others is something you should do every day, not just on special days.
I do not want to mislead anyone into thinking that I speak to everyone and I am always polite and remember to say please and thank you. I do, however, make an honest effort to do so.
I am also fully aware that there are days when the bus makes you late to class, the food is cold, the person on the other end of the phone is rude, and the paperwork is incorrect. But none of us is perfect and everyone has bad days.
Regardless, we owe each other, as human beings, common courtesy, and mutual respect.
The people (other than our parents, guardians and the student loan people) who make it possible for us to be here and learn on a daily basis deserve to be appreciated more than one designated day per year or once a semester.