Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Live Without Dead Time!

“Live without dead time; enjoy without chains.” This was the slogan Parisian University students shouted as they fought for a social revolution. In 1968, these students took over their campuses in the name of shaking up the establishment. The people who participated in this revolution were about as engaged as they come, yet as soon as they took over their campuses nothing overtly changed. The unquestionable lack of apathy that had accompanied their triumphs didn't lead to the leftist economic models proposed or even a change in government. For the large part these student revolutionaries failed to connect the real world with the ideals they had written about. Many of the grand idealists eventually abandoned their revolutions not because of lack of effort but because their effort was not sustainable. The only successes of the “May Revolutions” where were students were able to combine what they learned with pre-existing social issues.

In last weeks PioLog Mariah Sheilds asked if LC students could do better. Her concern is what seems to be a general lack of apathy on campus, students don't go to events, sports are a joke, no one really seems to care that our campus is abandoning its promise to reduce carbon emissions by canceling a significant portion of the shuttle service, people drink coca-cola... It is not at all difficult to find the “missed opportunities” Mariah talks about. Last week I hosted a movie night for the Eco-Olympics, however I found out hosting a movie night on campus might as well be called “watch a movie by yourself” because that is what I ended up doing when no one showed up. It would be easy to blame a lack of advertising or that students don't care about the environment but the issue is deeper than that.

Why is it that I can throw a movie night about a deeply thought provoking movie (Children of Men) and no one shows up, however, if I were to host a triple kegger with multiple games of beer pong and blast the same shitty music we listened to at our middle school dances, I would have so many people at my doorstep my doorstep would be made out of people? Student apathy is not about students not caring, it is about them caring about other things too. The apathy Mariah talks about is a result of there not being a connection between the two.

The divisions we create between our school life and our social life dictate how we spend our time. These lines are institutionalized in many ways. Fun is supposed to be spent drunk with your buddies. While drinking is pretty fun, advertisements also try pretty hard to make sure we understand what fun is. On the opposing side work is supposed to be about learning how society is going down the crapper because everyone is out drinking. Our teachers and academia do a good job at rewarding this kind of thought. However, the two are never connected. When was the last time any of us had a truly thought provoking conversation at a kegger? When was the last time someone had a kegger in their classroom? This separation “chains” us to a certain ways of thinking about how we spend our time. This is part of what the French were rebelling against and this is what we need to rebel against as well.

The “Paris Revolutions” only lasted for a little more than a month. The overarching leftist dreams were not sustainable, just like getting people to come watch an environmental themed movie with me is not sustainable. Events must reach out and combine already existing things that people do. We must find ways to put our messages into already existing social functions, otherwise they will never become permanent. How do we make a kegger sustainable? Anyone concerned about sustainability should be asking these questions and working to create solutions. “Sustainable keggers” should be a workshop our school offers, not movie nights with Kiel. It is only when we combine the knowledge we learn in school with how we see the world can change occur. Apathy is not about a lack of effort it is about how we institutionalize and reward effort. We must not be trying to reinvent the wheel constantly because we will never be able to move past the wheel and start working to building the rest of the bicycle.

Last year Focus the Nation was so successful because it combined school with environmentalism. For a day the teachers that we love took a day off from teaching classes and talked about global warming. Rooms were packed. Apathy is only apathy if we choose to see it that way. I hope that student leaders and the leaders of the school are constantly revaluing how we spend our time and money to revision how academics meet the social sphere. This is the only way real change can occur. The trick is not getting students to “Live Without Dead time” it is getting people to realize where deadtime ends and live time begins.  

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