Junior vs Senior

Still remember what did your seniors do to you during the orientation day?

Thank God, I only went through it ONCE in my entire life!! Yap, that was when I first entered high school at Madania. During my years at SIJ, juniors and seniors are indivisible. There were no such stupid rules which stated that we, junior students, must fully respect the senior students. It just happened naturally, everyone knew that we must respect each other, regardless we’re older or younger than them. Fortunately, there was no orientation day; no shouting, no ugly-looking face, no dirty clothes, no name-tags, no violence, and no jealousy. Juniors would not pretend to be polite when talking with seniors and seniors would not feel that they should boycott the entire conversation when talking with juniors. We were just friends, you know?

But Madania had a different story. I had to go through the orientation week which actually lasted for 2 months. Because Madania was a boarding school (it’s no longer a boarding school now), we were not permitted to go anywhere out of the campus for 2 full months. That means, we’re not allowed to call and meet family and friends outside the campus during the orientation. We’re totally excluded from the outside world. I was OK with that particular rule, because it was created by the school, so I basically had no problem with it. The main orientation week was also a bit fun. We’re not asked to do many weird things, although yes.. asking the signatures from the senior students was a must. But not until did I find out how our seniors treated us I became soooo homesick. I really wanted to go home or perhaps moved to other school before it was too late.

I heard more awful stories about the relationship between the younger and older students at most Indonesian high schools after I came to Madania. I was particularly lucky that I didn’t experience any physical violence from the senior students, nor had I have some issues with them before. Most of the issues I had face were directed to all of us, not individually. Yes, there were some incidents (physical violence) happened among the guys, but thank God there’s no such a thing with the girls. But it’s funny when you think about what happened back then…

Every months or so, we – the girls – were asked to gather in one place by the senior girls, usually the level 1A dorm was chosen. We called it sidang (court?). We always wondered when the news about the sidang was broke: did we do some mistakes?? I didn’t remember when our first sidang was, but I remember it was all about our behaviour for not respecting the senior students. There were shouting, angry faces, and unacceptable languages blaming us being not polite… and so on.. so forth. One of my friends were asked to sit in the middle, then one or two senior students shouted at her face. I was damn frightened. Coz that was the first time I experienced the “real” Indonesian type of orientation!! After the first gathering, we must called their names with “Kak”, and smiled, bowed, and said “Permisi, kak!” (Excuse me, sis!) whenever we passed them. I never agreed with the bowing thingy… it’s just ridiculous. Totally insane. We had to do it for 2 straight years, until we became a senior!

The teachers did know about this. But by the time we reported about their treatment towards us to our teachers, the senior students would later blame us for being so childish and we apparently received more shoutings. My 2nd Year was the worst year at Madania as far as I could remember. There were many awful incidents happened, including the violence among the boys (which resulted with the attacker being dropped out of the school). After the incident, the situation’s getting worst (revenge?no?). One of my girl friends was dragged into a toilet and forced to either drink a tap water or lick their shoes. I felt soooooo sorry for her!!! I didn’t know what the reason was, but there was some rumours that the reason behind it was jealousy. Sooo childish!

At Madania, we’re required to go to the mosque 5 times a day to perform the prayers. There were some penalties if a student did not attend the prayers more than 3 times, such as not allowed to go back home on the weekend (we called it “over-limit”). There was a committee called Pijid (Piket Mesjid) who was entitled to record the student’s names who came or did not come to the mosque. I was one of the committee’s members. Only the 2nd Year students were responsible for all the school’s organizations (except for BESTMAN); so none of the 3rd year students were able to “touch” that list. One day, we were all asked to gather in a class’s corridor. We were surprised that we were asked to make the list be changed. All seniors should be marked as “presence” whether or not they came to the mosque. Conclusion: NO over-limit for senior students! A friend of mine bravely objected their idea, but we all knew that we had to do it, or else we would receive more troubling issues. There were no such things marked as incorrect when it came to senior students. They always did the right thing. That’s a well-known rule, right?

Unfortunately, when we became senior students, we did almost the same thing to the junior students. I felt sorry and regret for them. Although we (the girls) rarely had the gathering thingy and gave them more freedom, but still.. the rules remained the same. I shouted at one girl once during sidang, coz I wanted to know how it really felt to do that haha. But whoaaa.. all I got was regret.. regret.. and regret (forgive me please). I tried to talk as little as possible to them, coz I knew that they were just acting so hard to be nice to me, just because I was a 3rd year student. All I could remember that it was painful pretending to be nice to someone whom you dislike so much. Another physical violence also happened among the guys during our last year. And it angered me that I thought my friends would never do such a thing to other people!!!

I’m sorry for revealing these “secrets”, but I guess we all have experienced these things. I never agree with the segregation of the junior and senior students at school. It’s just so unhealthy. I don’t understand how it first introduced to our schools and universities and why no one could ever stop it. People seem to accept it just because the ‘program’ exists at the majority of campuses across the nation. Regardless of how they treated us, I learnt something from them too. I learnt how to change myself (coz they forced us to change our so-called impolite behaviour), to accept other people opinions, and to face the problems by my own during my years spent at Madania. I tried not to report about these things to my parents and pretended that everything was indeed fun hehehe. I used to cry a lot in the first 2-3 months, but then I realise that crying was not a solution. It was hard, coz we were always together 24/7. Nevertheless it was an “unusual” memory and I became stronger than before hehehe…