Your world... to the Max

The new weekly World News column by World News Editor Max Flessner

Unfortunately I have bad news for those fans turning all the way back to the World News section to read the works of Brad’s Journal. He’s gone. He got lost looking for the most recent JCU Conservatives meeting and no one has seen him since. Just kidding. The staff has officially changed over and you’re in my world now.

To inform the few of you who do not know me, I am a junior political science major and have been with The Carroll News since I was a freshman. I also happen to be 15 to 20 of whichever unit you choose better than Brad’s Journal. So strap in, it’s going to be a wild ride.
Before I started my college search I had never heard of JCU. When I finally came out here and visited, I was more than impressed. The opportunities seemed endless. There were clubs and organizations for almost anything that any student could possibly be interested in (and naturally the award-winning Carroll News). The campus had hosted incredibly influential speakers, like Justice Scalia, and JCU seemed committed to social justice; a topic which, while I was still trying to define for myself, seemed like a worthwhile cause.

Good news admission office – you guys can sell anything. I bet you could sell hurricane insurance to Mayor Rothschild. Not to say that JCU isn’t a great school, because it is and I love it, but if you came here looking for an activist campus that would bring important issues into the light of criticism, you were, for the most part, mistaken.

There are small groups on campus that do believe strongly in a cause and stand up for it. The JCU Feminist collective, Labre, J.U.S.T.I.C.E., and Fair Trade to name a few. But, for the most part, people on this campus prefer an apathetic approach to world issues. Helping others is not a major priority for most students on this campus. You could get more people at a rally against ARAMARK, even though they’d all be freshmen who have no clue how much better they are than Parkhurst, than you could at a rally against genocide in Darfur.

There are two stereotypes that are associated with college – drunken frat-boys crushing beer cans on their heads until they pass out, and a student body that uses the little clause in the First Amendment which says you have the right to peacefully assemble and let your voice be heard.

It’s not a terrible thing that we don’t live up to the first, though there may be some residents of University Heights who disagree. But, if you only have four years to shape what you think, why wouldn’t you take full advantage of them?

Last week Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. was on campus giving a speech. While he did not talk about the court, that was not known before the speech was given. Being a Justice makes him an inherently controversial figure and yet again that could not have mattered less to students here. Why was there not a significant effort to try and say that there are people on this campus who disagree with him? The best efforts to show displeasure with his judicial philosophy were small sheets of paper that outlined controversial decisions he has been involved with. While a little something is better than nothing, I think that people who go here are smart enough to do better.

It is time for this campus to get involved in their world. If you feel strongly about an issue, or if you feel like you are in some way being wronged, by this campus or this world, you need to stand up and do something about it.

Contact Max at: mflessner09@jcu.edu