Giving national issues some campus context
America’s current societal crisis began long before Occupy Wall Street. After our summer of debt-ceiling discontent, perhaps it just became more clear.
But as college students, we must ask what makes our discontent different from that of previous generations? Anti-establishment angst might be what our age group does best, whether the target is war in South East Asia or class warfare in America.
With the geographic distance from the protests and our comfortable life at Colby, it’s so easy not to care. And, more than that, as college students, we are programmed to ignore the impeding reality of adult life. But, say we do navigate the hurdle of apathy; that still leaves a serious question of how to actually, physically make a difference, and what kind of difference, at that.
There’s also the issue of what to care about. As a friend recently asked, “How are we supposed to make the world a better place if we can’t even improve our own campus [by creating a gender and sexuality resource center]?” That’s a great question, and one that I’ll leave to the President’s Office and the Student Government Association to answer more fully.
Colby may feel remote, but as far as the economic currents of America are concerned, mid-Maine is anything but isolated. This presents us with myriad community service opportunities, a fact to which the size of the Colby Volunteer Center (CVC) can attest. And, beyond that, from clubs to social work to gender rights, we are changing things, big and small, on campus and off, all the time.
But what of this anger at corporate greed and political truthiness, this Occupyapalooza that is sweeping America? Are we in a position to affect change in that way? Can we even participate from our outpost on Mayflower Hill?
In a word: Yes.
It’s fitting that this should all come back to economics. A favorite parable of economics professors is that of the caveman who must choose between collecting wood for a fire and foraging for food to eat. Said caveman must balance his demand for resources with the supply of remaining daylight. He has a finite quantity of time to consume, and through its allocation he enters the canon of microeconomic lore. Like the caveman, we at Colby have limited time. Unlike the caveman, our questions of consumption are quite complicated, and you might even say societal, insofar as the current crisis is the result of our capitalist system. As one professor put it at Occupy Colby, “What we are looking at is a choice between being able to buy 500 TVs at Wal-Mart, and having adequate health care.”
Hyperbole aside, she was onto something. As a nation, we can choose, for example, between having health care in the future or having lower taxes now, but not both. Divide projected population by projected health care costs, subtract from tax revenue, and this becomes pretty clear.
And how does this relate to Colby?
From a young age, we understand that it is right to consume some amount of our time with charity. Looking at the CVC, Pugh Clubs, Male Athletes Against Violence and everything else, it is safe to say we are consuming well here. We–and I am as guilty here as anyone–should be as ethical in spending our money as our time.
Let's look at some of the corporate influences on Colby College. Sodexo. Sodexo serves two institutions in Maine: Colby College, and the Maine State Prison system. Maine’s prison system has a particularly checkered past, so it seems that the ethics preached by Sodexo on campus does not extend to their corporate ledgers. Certainly it did not extend to the workers interviewed in TransAfrica’s 2011 report on Sodexo labor violations. There are also the questions of why Sodexo prohibits bake sales and outside caterers. In what way are these policies good for Colby or the Waterville community? Not to say you should cancel your meal plan, that wouldn’t be practical. But it wouldn’t hurt to skip that Spa snack.
Then there’s good ole’ Wal-Mart, Waterville’s single biggest beneficiary of student business and number one in the Fortune 500. Also home of bargain deals, sexual discrimination, inadequate benefits and union busting. And child labor abroad. And $0.14 hour wages overseas.
It makes no sense to give our time to charity and clubs but our money to these corporations, especially with the local economy as it is. To the friend who wants to change campus, I agree, but ask, “Can we demand a gender resource center without thinking about the rest of the world, without also questioning the existing roles of corporations in our daily lives?”
Get your next coffee at Jorgensen’s. Get your groceries at Hannaford’s, or better yet, Barrels. Get your pizza from Cappza’s. Buy fair trade brands and know those corporations that aid important causes. Don’t do Sodexo any favors and most of all, find a way to avoid Wal-Mart.
By supporting local business we not only support our community, but we also make a stand, symbolic though it may be, with the 99 percent, and with our future selves. Some day soon, we will be looking for jobs and worrying about a whole new level of consumption: insurance, food, houses.
And some day in the slightly more distant future, we will become parents and these will become questions of ethics. Questions that our parent’s generation is still failing to address. How do we live? What do we want for our children?
But for now, this is enough. Together with volunteering, it constitutes a start. Maybe what’s different is that we are old enough to realize it.
