I know you read that headline and prepared yourself for a moralizing diatribe where I attack your apathy while rationalizing my own. I could tell you to be cynical about the food in the Ratty, but I know that you already are. I could tell you to be cynical of our investment transparency policies (or lack thereof), but maybe you have no interest in hearing why you should. At least for the moment, I am willing to lay down my leftist propaganda-sword in favor of what I consider to be a more pressing and important first step. Everyone, this is a desperate call not even for pointed cynicism, but for any cynicism that sees itself through to some real world consequence.
Don't get me wrong; there are a million things about Brown that I like, and I don't want to work towards a campus full of snarky and disaffected students. I have made great friends, have taken some amazing classes and maybe most importantly, have been introduced to a myriad of frameworks in which to think about the world. However, even though Brown has many incredible attributes for which I am indelibly grateful, it is far from a perfect place. Maybe my reasons for thinking so are very different than your own, and maybe down the road we can sit down and figure out exactly why, but right now I am not interested in that. Rather, I want to talk about the apathy that seems endemic to our student body, an apathy from which I certainly am not exempt.
Many a day I have chosen to sit in my room, numbing my brain with Reddit or Slashdot while there is really great work happening less than a mile away. Why, you ask, is this such a sin? Here, I think it's important to bring praxis into the discussion. What is the point of our accumulated knowledge and intelligence if it is being spent solely for the sake of academia? Why bother staying up late to read that book about Po-Mo deconstructionist thought if its stake in the world at large ends as soon as you close the cover and flick off your light? By this, I don't mean that we should consider a day wasted if we don't exclaim "This is Sparta!" before we go to bed at night. I only mean that I know I could be doing better, and looking around at the average Brown student, it seems to me that this is the case for many of us.
So, fellow Brunonians, if food at the Ratty is so bad that a sizable percentage of the campus is always complaining, why don't we do something about it? We are 8,261 strong, yet I have never seen more than several hundred students stand up for any particular cause. There is power in numbers, and I encourage you all to remember that at the end of the day, there is no Brown University without us. We populate the classes, pay for tuition and services, work as TAs and lab assistants. Without us, this school is an empty shell. Just imagine a situation in which 8,261 people went knocking on President Ruth Simmons' door in University Hall. Maybe we would show up at around 10 a.m. while she was still waking up and enjoying her morning coffee, and tell her that something about our University is completely unacceptable. Take for example the 1968 student walkout, when students of color at Brown decided that the pace of diversification was too slow. This effort was massive, unified and led to the creation of the Third World Center, as well as a new set of guidelines for admissions to follow to better diversify our community. Powerful stuff, right?
Today, I am not worried about my own political agenda nearly as much as our collective ability to make this school what we want it to be. Sure, my vision of Brown 50 years from now may look different than yours. However, I fear that until we realize our power as a student body, like the class of 1968 and so many others before us, the administration will continue to forge on with any and all plans to turn Brown into what they want and casually ignore opposition from all sides. Furthermore, I think this is our own fault and that we can decide to change it tomorrow.
So, everyone, let's start this year off right. Let's stop asking and start demanding. Let's stop thinking about how things might change and start showing up for any debate, action or speaker that might interest us. Let's make sure that if there is any campaign for change on this campus that we are behind, our collective weight is ready to be thrown at our opposition. Most of all, let's give the University a reason to listen to its students and create consequences for them if they don't.
Chris Norris-LeBlanc '13 is a mathematics and history concentrator from Pawtucket, RI. He may be contacted at christopher_norris-leblanc@brown.edu.
