Editor,
I am writing about the atmosphere of apathy I have felt on campus and elsewhere regarding political matters.
The other day, I went to a meeting of a chartered progressive group to find that - aside from the chair, myself and one other person - no one had come. It was not atypical. I have gone to enough other groups to spot the same trend. Few seem to care.
Those who get involved are often harried but seldom appreciated - even more rarely are they emulated. Instead, the most common reactions range from indifference to bemusement, as one would watch a curious zoo animal. Occasionally the response is warm, but rarely followed up.
Here, in what is still - despite the Patriot Act and National Security Agency wiretapping - the freest country in the world, there is a terror of being seen as out of line, speaking up or challenging the pattern and flow of society. With this goes a sense of disempowerment - as though the only ways to affect the course of government were voting every two years or being elected to high office.
Seeing such reactions among the educated is particularly disturbing. I can understand the difficulty among the less fortunate in keeping up on the news while making ends meet, especially as our nation's inequities have deepened. Still, to see apathy suffusing much of the student body - especially given that as students, we enjoy special privilege and opportunity - is regrettable.
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In large part, I fault our nation's educational paradigm. Education is seldom treated as a means of acquiring the values of good citizenship, independent thought and vigorous democracy. That role is abdicated, to be filled by an ethic of marketing that pervades our daily life and increasingly penetrates into schools themselves.
Our institutes of higher learning are content to envelop themselves and their students in an isolated world of absolute knowledge. It is wrong that our priorities should be so focused on the short-term gain of wealth - or even academics - that we lose sight of richer values that define who we become as a people.
Of course, many students do wonderful things, helping in countless ways wherever they can. But the unintended effect of even this involvement is to confine the vast majority of political discourse and activism to a rather small cohort of elite students and lifelong radicals or partisans - in short, an isolated political caste.
This may seem depressing, but the truth, though well hidden, is quite contrary. We have extraordinary freedom. An array of organizations already exist on campus and funding is open to do all sorts of things.
All that is needed to build a better future is the conviction and encouragement to take time out from the whirlwind of achievement and competition to learn about an issue that matters, and stand for it. At this point, it scarcely matters what you stand for - so long as you will dare to be counted. Democracy cannot flourish - or survive - through silence.
Olivier Simon
UNM student
