I'm As Mad As Hell, etc.
I've been giving a lot of thought recently to the general sense of apathy that covers this campus like a blanket. Election turnouts are, time and time again, depressingly small. Students on this campus seem, by and large, to be content with going to class (or not), keeping their heads down, and maybe getting so drunk on Thursday night that they forget to wake up and sleep straight on until, oh crap, it's time for their 9:35 class on Monday. And here's the thing: you people seem perfectly fine with that. You don't care about overcrowding, so long as you have your room with your best friend since freshman orientation locked in. Too bad neither of you could scrape the 3.0 to get into the West Apartments, dude. Does that piss you off? It should, because I've just described a wildly disproportionate segment of the campus population. PROVE ME WRONG. I want to see you joining clubs, and voting in student elections, and maybe, hey, running for office in USG (But maybe not now. Maybe you need to work up to it). I want you to rally, and petition, and get passionate about the things that happen in our semi-insular little world, here on campus. In short, I want you to get MAD. I want you all to stand up and accept your places as members of this campus. I want you to accept that yes, you can affect change around here. You don't have to bitch about the meal plan or the bureaucracy or unsanitary dining halls or shoddy construction jobs or anything, you can do something about it. But first you've got to get mad, damn it. |
The fate of our campus community is linked in many ways with the health of the outside community.
Commuters or not, what happens at Stony Brook is increasingly impacting the surrounding area and vice versa. I think this is a positive trend even though the short-term outlook might be negative in terms of traffic impact and over development.
There are many initiatives still in their infancy that provide huge interfaces between Stony Brook and local employers in exciting high-tech industries. The university will be smack in the middle of a county-wide wireless network.
It's not so much about getting angry and changing things. It's about being inspired. Inspired people care and get angry on their own.
If people are not engaged they're just gonna sail right through. They're gonna live for the parties because that's what they can control. I mean, for most people, if you think about it, the largest splash they're going to make is if they get ridiculously drunk at a party and swallow a ping pong ball.
Upcoming events
- Admissions Open House(event)(3 hours)
- Men's Basketball vs Wagner(event)(7 hours)
- Caribbean Students Organization Thanks 4 Giving Dinner(event)(13 hours)
- LASO Multicultural Dinner(event)(13 hours)
- Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, Duo Piano(event)(13 hours)
agreed, yet...
I agree with you.
But, I think there's just this general lack of communication on campus. Nobody cares because nobody knows.
Also, many of the students are commuters, which, in my opinon, doesn't help the "let's get together and get angry and change things!!" attitude. I'm sure they can't really relate to this much at all.