I've been reading lately. Not just reading my textbooks for class, but reading for the sake of reading. Currently I'm revisiting Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," a novel that creates a frightening, dystopian world of book-burning and the destruction of knowledge. In it, one of the characters argues, "We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"
I've also been reading The Herald lately. Nearly every day when I get lunch, I pick up a copy and read it over lunch or bring it to my next class. The columns, letters and editorial are always my favorite. Yet I was very troubled by the description by Joey Borson '07 of my peers as a "bunch of broadly liberal, but often apathetic students"("Orgo exams and the ties that bind," Oct. 21). Borson's column was amusing, but the accuracy of his frank admission that we're "often apathetic" terrified me.
So I've decided that as much as we read, we aren't doing enough. As much as we shout and scream and pump up our reputation as the Ivy League hot-bed of liberalism, if we aren't putting our time and action where our mouths are, we're a fraud - nothing more than a group of privileged, yuppie students at one of the best universities in the world who care about ourselves and nothing else.
And after I read that sentence in Bradbury's classic on censorship I asked myself: What is it that gets me hot and bothered and ready to scream? I listed a number of issues, but then I asked myself the more important question: What have I done lately to further those causes? Not nearly as easy an answer.
So now I challenge this campus to likewise question ourselves. I challenge us to prove Borson wrong. I don't care what your issue is. If a woman's right to choose is your thing, do something to protect it. If you're concerned with the environment or gay rights or sexism, the war or energy policy or poverty, get out there and do anything to make it better. For all I care, you can even go join a radical group like Anti-Racist Action. I won't think very highly of you, but I'll certainly respect you more than the disgustingly large percentage of students who are apathetic.
Don't let apathy win. It's apathy that allowed Bradbury's fictional society to start censorship by burning books. It's apathy that will eventually destroy our great political experiment called the United States of America. It's apathy that's the enemy - not the opposing viewpoint.
Pick your issue(s). Be bothered. After all, it's only apathy we've got to lose.
Max Chaiken '09 has nightmares about firemen burning his bookshelf.
