It has come to my attention that there is a slow underground movement of university students who hope to turn our fair city of Madison into a pit of sloth, laziness and general apathy.
When they are not consumed by the arduous work of being self-involved, these apathetic persons try to convert others to their sinful ways. These unconscientious slobs openly reject their right to vote claiming a lack of \caring"" on part of the politicians. News of war, poverty, and corruption seem unable to penetrate the fog of sloth surrounding these people. As long as it is not going to affect the black hole of productivity you call a dorm room, why should you care, right?
I came to college in search of a cultural climate a little less conservative than the one I left in the South. I was lucky enough to find it in Madison. Unfortunately, even our liberal despot has been hit by the wave of apathy that has consumed the rest of the nation.
After the scores of political scandals we have experienced over the past decade, I understand the disillusionment experienced by many voters. I grew up in Maryland, in the shadow of our nation's capital, and I too was bombarded by crack-smoking mayors (Mayor Marion Barry) and elitist snobs (anybody who lives in northwest D.C.) However, I did not retreat into my own little world, assuming that life outside my sphere would take care of itself.
Politics is not about reaching you personally. Politics is about connecting with a greater group of citizens. When you vote, when you are active in the political process, you are giving your opinion on how the greater good can be reached. It would be nice if we lived in Oz and politicians were able to reach out to you and inquire what changes you would like to see. But they don't have the time. They are busy campaigning, networking, fund-raising and diddling interns.
Your voice is only heard when you're active. And yes, this does require that you get up and do something. Your ""rights as an individual"" can be protected through voting (especially in the primaries), but if you want to get personal, if you want that individual attention, I suggest you join a support group.
I am not writing to preach empty cliches at you like some State Street evangelist. I, too, know the pressures of being a college student (after all, I pay out-of-state tuition.) I do not have time to contemplate the state of humanity all the time. However, I can at least make the attempt to get involved with groups who do. The shadow of needless violence and poverty will not fall over me.
Why would anyone choose to do nothing in such a politically charged time? We have a blind idiot as president, a virtual holocaust in Africa and escalating bloodshed in the Middle East. While I may not agree with the extremists on campus, I respect their political fervor and compassion for those around the world who are silenced by hunger, disease or poverty. The ""apa-theists"" of our generation will be the ones who allow half of the citizens of South Africa to die before they reach 50. The AIDS virus is on par with the Bubonic Plague.
How can I not care about that? Why should I sit idly by as violence and hatred breed another desperate broken generation of orphans and suicide bombers? If you want to hide up in your dorm (tastefully decorated in Che Guevara posters, you hypocrite) and complain about the lack of ""personal politics"" that is fine. But I will, when the world crumbles in on itself because Bush got a little trigger happy when he was playing Cowboys and Indians, be the first to point my fingers at the fools who ""had no time to care."" And then, through the nuclear waste, I will proceed to beat the crap out of all the ""compassionate conservatives"" with my grotesquely mutated fist.
I refuse to believe that compassion is dead. The dozens of charity groups on campus are proof enough that all of us are not completely self-involved all the time. Those who decline democracy's call for action negate the most rudimentary responsibilities they have as citizens of the free world: those to ourselves and to those that have been silenced. For the first time, history will judge a generation not by what they have accomplished, but by what they neglected to stop.
The sideline is not a permanent position, nor is it a lifestyle. Dante once wrote that the ""hottest spots in Hell are reserved for those who remained neutral in times of great crisis."" I certainly hope so.
