I had a conversation with a friend the other day about possible topics for this column. She suggested that I write about how the country will collapse when George W. Bush becomes president. I told her that as tempting as that topic may be, I like to keep Giuliani's Corner focused on campus-related issues. Her counterpoint was that the election is a campus issue because it affects the whole campus, even though most students here probably could not identify "Dubya" if he were in a police line up with five Icelandic midgets.
"But I hate those whiny, bitchy and preachy columns that try to get University students to care about something outside the impenetrable three-foot security wall," I said to her.
However, I do find this sort of apathy funny, especially since most students have so much in common with Dubya: They are rich, spoiled, coked-out, slow-witted brats.
Without realizing it, she had given me a topic: It is acceptable for University students to be apathetic. There is really nothing so damn important out there that it deserves our precious time. Very little of what some on-campus groups fret about ends up affecting one's day-to-day life. Our four-year lease here is too short and important to waste on mindless protests that do not concern us.
The best example of wasting energy on a meaningless issue is Students Against Sweatshops. That is an issue that has no real bearing on the average student's day-to-day life here. It makes no difference who sews our clothes, as long as they end up in our closets.
I suppose there is some esoteric moral reason for preferring clothes that are not made with cheap labor, but as long as the bookstore does not run out of overpriced, officially licensed Duke crap, nobody cares from where it comes. I do not know what other commitments these SAS people have, but I know I do not have hours and hours to dedicate to protests, letter writing campaigns or sit-ins.
In terms of national politics, there is also little for University students to care about. Perhaps the two biggest real fears a student may have are A) the waging of foreign wars and B) the raising of taxes. About half of the student population should care about the start of another U.S. war, being that at a moment's notice they can be called away from their nice little dorm room and thrown into some god-forsaken nation to defend a hill against an opposing army that likes to torture its POWs.
Even then, who the president is will not stop a war from occurring. That decision is left to the leaders of foreign nations and in the boardrooms of big defense contractors.
The President alone cannot decide whether or not to go to war. Even if he could, the probability that one's vote will make a difference in an election is terribly small.
Tax increases are the same. All our elected officials and our nonelected lobbyists make those decisions. There is no way one student, or a group of them, can influence the policy making process through voting.
Local Durham politics are of a little more concern, seeing as how they govern us more directly than the President, yet even then they are probably not more important than getting a paper written on time or spending more time to learn a new concept in a course.
The cost of gathering these types of data exceed sthe benefit one gains from them. This net loss makes it logical for students to concentrate on only what is relevant to their lives. Taking up some idealistic crusade that will have only distant ramifications is silly. Apathetic University students realize this fact and do not participate in such unnecessary endeavors.
Our time here is short. It is a time to live in the present, to learn and to have fun. It is the last time to live without the worries of the real world. Let us not squander it on useless "causes," but spend it wisely on self-improvement.
Dave Nigro is a Trinity senior.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.