Dear Amelia,
I, like you, was disillusioned when I got to campus last year. I yearned to hear multiple languages in dining halls and debate over political issues at dinner. My first assignment as a writer for the Voice was about healthcare reform. The majority of students I interviewed had no idea that reform even existed, and I was shocked. My article literally turned into a handbook on healthcare because I thought that it was imperative to increase awareness. For a while, I considered transferring because I felt like I had been conned by Admissions. I pictured my “college experience” to be so different from my first semester on campus.
We do live in a bubble here, but what college campus doesn’t?
Last year I wrote a front-page article about the Hope for Haiti fundraiser at Conn. I compared it to other NESCAC responses, and quite frankly, our reaction paled in comparison. You may know from your research in Voice archives that the events were held three months after the earthquake actually happened. This was partially because we were on winter break for the entirety of January, but also because the school was taking careful steps to decide the best allocation for the money raised. Because our response wasn’t immediate, student attention shifted away from the crisis. It is a shame, because those events had the potential to be successful, but I find it unfair to blame Conn students for the lack of enthusiasm, when media corporations worldwide reacted in the same manner.
I am the President of Human Rights Now, and I am not apathetic about the situation in Pakistan. I have, in fact, pledged club support to the students working on this initiative and invited them to come to our weekly meetings to let us know the best way we can contribute our resources.
I understand that having spent a little over a month on campus may give you the impression that we are “behind” in the realm of global awareness, but consider that when the New York Times disappeared off the racks on campus last year, students were so outraged that SGA quickly ensured the renewal of the Readership Program. What I’ve found is that a superficial look around campus won’t show you what College Relations’ paraphernalia touts, but that doesn’t mean that the global-minded community doesn’t exist. You may just have to look a little harder than you expected.
Read “Are We as Involved as We Think We Are?” here.
