What are we truly concerned about? What are the issues that will set us off? What tears at our minds at night, pulls us from concentrating on our academics, and fills our conversations and forums, bringing out vivid expressions of our opinions? For years I have heard the concerns of the Rensselaer student body first-hand. Too often I hear complaints about inconveniences and frustrations of students that are local in nature and relatively small in scope. Our publications are filled with student concerns, and the acute issues of our campus, but nobody ever wants to talk about the big picture, the national and international issues that will define our lives, or wants to entertain a broader discussion.
Now is the time that we should begin to become cognizant of the world around us if we are ever to truly achieve this. If we wish to lead on any level, within any industry or career path, we must become global citizens who understand the context of our lives and the world around us. This is where the apparent apathy and narrow-mindedness in regards to students expressing their opinions strikes me as simply alarming; it is evident in the issues that we talk about, write about, and discuss during our time at Rensselaer.
We don’t talk about the role of alcohol in our society and the impact on development of a college student, but of the restrictions of a new rush or social policy. We don’t talk about how athletics is addressed within The Rensselaer Plan, but how we cannot play pick-up basketball on a Saturday evening. We don’t talk about the role of science and technology in an interconnected global community, but of the hardships and sacrifice particular to a technological education. We do not debate the merits of a particular foreign policy or pending legislation, but simply leave that for another audience.
It seems the only thing remotely political in nature that can get a group of students fired up on campus is a national leader who may hold opposing views to ours coming to Rensselaer. Instead of questioning their policies, we complain about how we have been personally wronged by their visit. When will the day come when we see our campus groups pull together over something other than an opposing party member? When will we rally behind a policy and not a person? Why is it that we are apathetic to the concerns of our world?
Maybe because we did not grow up in the shadow of a national conscription, where the limits of freedom of opinion and expression were pushed far beyond society’s perceived bounds. Maybe because we did not live in a generation in which four students died on the campus of Kent State over a war that raged half way around the globe. A generation that confronted civil rights, an issue that had festered for a century in the backroom of public policy and national attention. A generation that had yet to forget how easily the world could be engulfed into conflict. Is it that we are afraid that we will not put forth the best argument or flawed logic? Is it because we do not have to carry a draft card that we do not voice our opinions on global conflicts? Is it that these are not trying times? Are we so privileged that we do not know adversity enough to care?
An Iraqi citizen is no less a person because he is not a Rensselaer student. A child caught in the violence and ravaging climate of the Sudan is just as innocent as you or I. A young boy placed in the famines of an African continent is just as hungry as those that fill our local soup kitchens. A president who takes a nation to war is not exempt from ridicule or support because our brother is not patrolling the streets of a hostile nation.
It is time to broaden our perspective, show concern for the issues that truly matter, and debate the merits and impacts of the policies and decisions that will define our lives. My biggest fear is not that someone will misspeak, but when the time comes when someone needs to be spoken for, all will fall silent.
