Spring Break
College campuses isolated from the rest of the world's news and views
Christian Ashlar
Issue date: 9/18/07 Section: Viewpoints
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An odd trend seems to happen as we go about our lives here on campus. As we make friends and learn about the people who surround us on a regular week-to-week basis, we tend toward shutting out the rest of the world. This isn't a bad thing or even a conscious thing that most of us do, it just seems to happen and it doesn't happen to all of us but it does happen to a great many of us.
With the University Center and the Elam Center and the football stadium, our campus is its own little world and within it we have entertainment, sustenance, and friendship; after all, what more do we really need? That is often the mentality that begins this trend. Again, this isn't a bad thing but rather, just something that happens. It happens so slowly that we aren't even aware of it. The down side to this trend is that it often causes a bit of isolation and not in the way that we're all sort of asleep to what's going on in the world but rather in a way that we're not as finely attuned to it because while we're inside this little world of our own, the things outside of it aren't really all that important.
Recently, I took a trip to San Francisco and found some great scenery and fantastic conversation about world events that really surprised me - and this was just in the airport! People around me were talking about Greenpeace efforts in the Northwest Passage and something called Blackwater and I sat there, mesmerized. I have considered myself to be rather up to date on current events but here I was in the airport terminal surrounded by a rainbow of different people and the brilliance was blinding. I learned more about the "outside" world in a matter of thirty minutes than I did cruising CNN.com the entire last week! It was truly an eye-opening experience for me.
This sort of revelation showed me just what sort of insulation college campuses provide for its students. While again, this isn't a bad thing, I thought it would make for a good column because each of us lives within two worlds while we're in college. Without sounding as if I'm possessed by Rod Serling (look him up, head-scratchers! That's really what Google is for!), one of these worlds is the world of textbooks, campus lattes, study sessions and Greek life while the other world is the one where we're deadlocked in a war few want, where an ex-President named Hilary is fighting to become a real leader, and where we're led by people named Murtha, Mukasey, and Obama…maybe we've all been possessed by Rod Serling!
With the University Center and the Elam Center and the football stadium, our campus is its own little world and within it we have entertainment, sustenance, and friendship; after all, what more do we really need? That is often the mentality that begins this trend. Again, this isn't a bad thing but rather, just something that happens. It happens so slowly that we aren't even aware of it. The down side to this trend is that it often causes a bit of isolation and not in the way that we're all sort of asleep to what's going on in the world but rather in a way that we're not as finely attuned to it because while we're inside this little world of our own, the things outside of it aren't really all that important.
Recently, I took a trip to San Francisco and found some great scenery and fantastic conversation about world events that really surprised me - and this was just in the airport! People around me were talking about Greenpeace efforts in the Northwest Passage and something called Blackwater and I sat there, mesmerized. I have considered myself to be rather up to date on current events but here I was in the airport terminal surrounded by a rainbow of different people and the brilliance was blinding. I learned more about the "outside" world in a matter of thirty minutes than I did cruising CNN.com the entire last week! It was truly an eye-opening experience for me.
This sort of revelation showed me just what sort of insulation college campuses provide for its students. While again, this isn't a bad thing, I thought it would make for a good column because each of us lives within two worlds while we're in college. Without sounding as if I'm possessed by Rod Serling (look him up, head-scratchers! That's really what Google is for!), one of these worlds is the world of textbooks, campus lattes, study sessions and Greek life while the other world is the one where we're deadlocked in a war few want, where an ex-President named Hilary is fighting to become a real leader, and where we're led by people named Murtha, Mukasey, and Obama…maybe we've all been possessed by Rod Serling!
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