Fighting Apathy

"That doesn't concern me." How many times have we thought this to ourselves when confronted with an issue affecting some other group on campus?

Protecting difference means identify-ing with one another.

When Professor Mansfield last spring berated the achievements of Black students on campus, where were the legions of groups lining up in support of the BSA? A few letters offering a few scanty remarks from a few members of a few organizations flickered across the editorial pages of a few campus publications. But most people sat on the sidelines thinking to themselves, "That doesn't concern me."

When Peninsula published its splashy double issue on homosexuality, where was the BSA? AAA? RAZA? La O? Hillel? AEO? Some would ask, "Where was the BGLSA?" And where was the Civil Liberties Union? Where was Amnesty International? The Progressive Students Organization? A couple of women from RUS wrote an editorial, but where were the scores of women lining up in solidarity against Peninsula?

And what about that magazine's encore performance the following spring: the "spade" controversy? Remember the blatantly racist posters depicting a Black woman performing a striptease in front of a white male audience? Remember the "conference" at which "experts" claimed that the sexual revolution "destroyed" the Black family?

Where was the BGLSA this time around? Where was RUS? Where were the ASA, the CSA or the KSA? Where was the SAA? Hillel? Certainly, racism and racist images don't solely concern black women, but the general impression, left by the `campus' weak response was, "That doesn't concern me."

Our silence and ignorance on issues we believe don't concern us is frightening. How many of us have been to meetings of more than a few of the above mentioned groups (which represent only a small portion of campus organizations)? How many of us can decipher even a handful of these acronyms? How many of us, when confronted with difference, automatically think, "That doesn't concern me?"

The issue most affecting our campus is our complacent denial of difference. If we cannot begin to identify with one another, if we cannot begin to look beyond those who most resemble ourselves, we risk falling into the dark void of solipsism and devaluing our most valuable resource. We must concern ourselves with the protection of each other's difference.

William Tate Dougherty is Editor Emeritus of HQ Magazine.