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Man I can’t believe it, a major political figure (Ralph Nader) spoke at my campus tonight and I could have got in for free. Yet I didn’t go, neither did anyone I know, in fact except for this one hippie chick passing out flyers for it I never heard it discussed at all. The man was the primary third candidate in a Presidential election for Gods sake! Even if he hadn’t been in the election, he’s a huge advocate of consumer rights and small business, both things which a lot of people would be interested in (if they had interests). I mean seriously what is wrong with my generation? My country is in a war right now, a freakin war for crying out loud! And yet on campus, outside of the occasional reference, you wouldn’t even know it. I mean sure, when war was pending we had a peace demonstration (garnered about 100 people) and then we had a war demonstration (garnered about 100 people). Aside from this pathetic turnout it has just been life as usual, I guess no one has the energy for social concerns anymore. Maybe you are thinking “Geez John that sucks… but maybe your campus is just self-centered and only cares about local issues?” Well you are wrong my friend. We just had a student election. We have over 17,000 students attending our university and guess what kind of voter turnout we had? About 900 people voted…. 900!! Now I’m no rocket scientist, but according to my calculations that’s less than a 5% turnout. Now it’s true that Boise State is largely made up of non-traditional students, but so what? These people are in chare of appropriating something like $150,000 for student programs and clubs. That seems like an awful lot of money for us to let people handle without even considering who stands for what, and what they will support. What do you think has led to this state of affairs in America? I mean this isn’t just a Boise State University Problem, or a Boise problem, or an Idaho problem. I think the problem is that nothing seems to impact us directly, nothing seems quite real. The news we see on t.v. seems just like everything else we see on t.v. Unless it’s my family, or me personally what do I care? It’s ironic that I’m the one who is posting about this, and let me tell you why. I’m the guy that just takes whatever classes I need to get by, and tries to get the easiest professors regardless of whether this is going to help me learn or not. I’m the guy who didn’t vote in the last Presidential election, much less the Boise State one. I’m the guy who belongs to no student organizations, volunteers for nothing, does no independent research, and has no real hobbies to speak of. I’m the guy who started this post 2 freakin weeks ago and is just now finally forcing himself to finish it! Yeah that’s right, it’s ironic that I am posting about Apathy (in a negative light) seeing as how I’m its poster-boy. I don’t care about anything and I never get involved. I don’t watch out for my neighbors and I don’t meet new people! It’s ridiculous and I for one vow to change… if I can ever make myself care….
my new tie
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Linc's First Month moblog14
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Don’t worry about it, if it was a real problem it would be part of “President” Bush’s Axis of Evil. Kick back and relax and enjoy the coming of summer, doesn’t the warmth make you feel like taking a nap? There you go…
Also I would have really loved to see Ralph Nader speak. You should have gone!
hm.. i feel the same, i guess. anyway, first of all, this isn’t a local problem, exactly the same stuff is going on back at my university in germany. while for our parents the campus was a place full of politic ideas and campaigns, for me and my friends it is merely a place where you attend (or not) courses with people you neither know nor care about.
as you, my idea of how i should particiate in the social system that surrounds me and in the way i actually do not do anything at all sometimes vexes me… i consider myself politically aware & eqipped with common sense, so of course i feel that i should read newspaper, watch news on tv, vote etc, but whenever i deal with these subjects they become amazingly annoying; you feel like yelling at the tv, watching cnn with its horribly propagandic/pathetic 5-second war-trailers, etc, things like that just make you wanna hide from reality, which is what i / we do most of the time, i guess..
yet you know that you actually should care..
it’s like election-time here in japan. all the cars packed with politicians, smile switched on, yelling at people via the stereo, it’s supposed to make you wanna vote them, but all it does do is that it makes you wish you could cast a vote here, so that you could NOT VOTE to show them how much it annoys you..
gee, sounds fuzzy, eh? i wish i could blog in german..
Ziam, great comment. Yes I know exactly what you mean, what the heck is wrong with us? By the way I understand your frustrations with trying to adequately express yourself in English, I have that same difficulty… but it’s the only language I speak!