Throughout my childhood, I had a problem sleeping. Unlike seemingly everyone else in the world, I hated sleeping. I’d lie in bed for hours, thinking about the cool stuff I was sure I was missing.
Once I thought I’d suffered long enough—generally by 4 a.m.—I would jump out of bed and run down the stairs in search of fun activities. While I never found much more than a warm, staticky TV screen, I did get a lot of TV watching done.
My days typically began with a few reruns of SportsCenter until my parents came down and subjected me to the Today Show. This usually just made me angry—I really, really didn’t care about cupcake recipes.
But over time, I learned to appreciate the Today Show. I didn’t start baking cupcakes but I did begin to learn what was going on in the world. Sure, I didn’t have a deep understanding, but I got enough information to dominate political arguments with my other 8-year-old friends.
Over time, this interest flowered into a really convincing college essay topic. I wrote about how I read newspapers every morning and followed every update from the Capitol like a really boring gossip columnist. I talked about how I wanted to be involved with politics for the rest of my life and how much I loved knowing what was going on in the world.
But then I came to college. And in the daily grind, things are easily forgotten. I no longer have to wake up to Matt Lauer’s smiling face or my mother’s ramblings on why Congress couldn’t tie its own shoe. I can effectively hide in a bubble of Bowdoin, completely ignoring everything around me.
I wouldn’t be alone in this bubble. Asking around my dorm, it seemed few, if any, people really stayed current with the news. When the government shut down, I lazily announced to my roommates that we should outsource our government to China, expecting an eye roll at my millionth bad joke. Instead I was met by a chorus of “huh?” and “sweet, no more government handouts.” It was a huge deal, but no one really cared.
Myself included. I dismissed it as politics as usual and carried on with my midterms, only half-interested. I quickly scanned a list of the government agencies shut down, saw the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau had closed, and briefly lamented that I would have to put my plan to officially name and sell my microbrew on hold. But the politics no longer had that same hold over me; their appeal had seemingly vanished.
While I considered my mini-existential crisis, my floormates moved on. They had completely stopped keeping up with the news, and they didn’t care. In fact, they seemed a little happier. The news had been a really pitiful partner, one of those friends who makes a point of showing you just how much everything sucks. And now, they were free. The shutdown, dragging me down by virtue of association, didn’t affect them.
But is that a good thing?
The shutdown showcased a lot of pitiful things about American government. The news constantly shows us a lot of pitiful things about American government. But the shutdown also impacted many, many people.
While my friends and I didn’t have parents furloughed by the federal government, trying to survive for two weeks without pay, others did.
And while I didn’t contract salmonella after the USDA stopped inspecting food, 278 people did. Had it lasted much longer, there very well could have been a full-scale outbreak.
To say that something like the shutdown didn’t matter because it didn’t affect me wasn’t just painfully misinformed, it was rude. And while I advocated apathy in this column only a month ago, inaction isn’t the same as a lack of caring. When the world treats people, on a large scale, with a fundamental lack of justice, those fortunate enough to not be effected owe it to themselves and those less fortunate to educate themselves
Before you tell me to stop diagnosing a problem unique to first years, scared and sad in a big new world, consider how closely you followed the government shutdown. Then continue to deride me. Because while I truthfully don’t have any idea how closely you followed the shutdown, I do see the general attitude of my peers: obstinate in their denial of the importance of news. While they certainly chose the easier path, ignoring the news only ensures the next government debacle or banking crisis or other devastating event will blindside them.
I’m not calling for a fundamental change in the way we surf the internet or spend our time. In fact, I may be a little too angry given how little I’m asking. But as a school full of very smart people, we owe it to ourselves to keep up. Even just checking in with CNN.com every week or so does the job. While I acknowledge it may be the unnecessarily harder path, Bowdoin educates a whole lot of people who found success taking the harder path.