It’s pretty rare that I find real insight in movies. More often than not, I roll my eyes at the ideological, romantic or na√É.√Øve insights that they share. But as I watched “School of Rock” on a Tuesday night with a bag of Newman’s Own Organics popcorn, truth was found!

The revelation I experienced had to do with the movie’s notion of “the Man.”

Dewey Finn, Jack Black’s character, declares, “The World is run by the Man. Oh, you don’t know the Man? He’s everywhere. In the White House … down the hall … Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man.” So what exactly is this conception of the Man?

First, for all you feminists out there, I would like to clarify that the concept of the Man has nothing to do with gender. The Man, if you are so inclined, could be “the Woman.”

The Man has different meanings for different people, but I like to think of the Man in the following way: The idea of the Man is entirely embedded within the power structure of the establishment. The Man is the establishment. The concepts of the Man, more specifically, are the arbitrary societal norms that continue to be enforced, though they lack any real substantive logic behind them.

The Man is dogmatic and paternal, and believes that only its rationality takes precedence. This socially constructed figure can be seen throughout campus; a good example is our current irrationality regarding drug policy.

Most of us out there, some of us through personal experience, know the consequences of “hitting the bowl” in the dorm room. Yes, my friends, I am talking about smoking Mary Jane in your residential community.

Many resident assistants I know personally seem to have no problem with marijuana use — some even enjoy it themselves — but still feel the need to enforce the policy they are instructed to implement. They seem to feel that their allegiance to the resident director and the office of Residental Life ultimately takes precedence over their own moral stance on marijuana.

RAs with this thought process ultimately believe that their self-interests are more important than their own ethical standpoints, and this is not a good thing. As we have seen through prisoner’s dilemma and public good problems, ethics and self-interest sometimes clash.

There are too many other examples to list.

So I call upon all RAs enforcing smoking policies they disagree with, and all others who go along with vain and irrational social norms, to rethink their actions. If you are implementing policy that you feel is wrong or if you are acting in a manner that you believe is misguided even though society has deemed it arbitrarily sufficient, recognize your error and correct it.

“You gotta get mad at the Man. You’ve got to feel it in your blood and guts.” Stick it to him!