I sometimes think that college students have a certain reputation to live up to. We?re supposed to be busy, stay focused and step on those beneath us in order to get ahead in life. The college student following this unspoken rule will drive through campus without looking to the left or the right, and thus avoid making eye contact with those innocent people who are waiting at the crosswalk. However, there are some students who do not live up to this reputation.

It is these students who help restore my faith in college students.

Last week, for example, a student broke out of her busy, straight-ahead, get everything done schedule and stopped to help a professor in distress outside the Riverfront Center.

As the professor later told the story to a class, she was having a good day. Her classes were going well, and she took a break to go get some food.

She went over to the Riverfront Center, ate some rice for lunch and headed back to her office.

But as he stepped outside the Riverfront Center , as she put it, she “lost her lunch.” Suddenly, right there, in front of several hundred students who had just ingested their own meals.

The professor had no warning, no time to prepare, but plenty afterwards as she tried to regain her composure after depositing her starchy meal on the sidewalk.

This must have been a particularly unusual sight because this professor is always dressed professionally. Her hair and her clothes are always put together fashionably. In short, she?s not the person you would expect to blow chunks on the concrete.

She has been at Sacramento State for 20 years, but definitely does not fit the stereotype of a “well-seasoned” professor. I still find it very hard to picture her in such a humiliating situation.

She stood there for several moments, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

This happened at lunchtime, and there were plenty of students who passed by, stopped to stare and then continued on their way ? in typical college student fashion.

But there was one girl who did not follow the crowd. Instead, she stopped and asked the professor if she could help and then ran inside to get some napkins to clean up the debris.

Acts such as these restore my faith in my fellow students, reminding me that, though we are far from perfect, maybe we?re on the right track after all.

Layla Bohm is a Communication Studies major and can be contacted c/o The State Hornet, CSUS, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819 or by email at [email protected].