THE PULP: Student Apathy

After 3 successful issues, The Pulp (only campus student-run newspaper) maybe at its end...read away

Rewind back to February. Leaning on a wall in Pilkington in the same position for the last 20 minutes, I have enough time to work out that Andy* is the fourth person to miss a meeting with me in the last 3 weeks. Since October of 2006, an idea had been brewing in my mind to start a program to help international students improve their casual conversation skills, a scheme I had been involved with at my previous university. Implementing the project was much harder than planned – I had anticipated that a certain number of logistical problems would surely crop up, but I never envisioned that my biggest hurdle would be something as trivial as getting people to show up when they said they would. Fast forward 8 months to October 3rd. Myself and four other students sit sparsely around a table, the emptiness of the room slightly embarrassing us as we listen to the new head of journalism kindly deliver us a speech he had prepared for the 25 people that were expected to come. In both instances and countless others, I was, and am, appalled at the sense of indifference that flourishes on this campus.

Examples are abundant, and I didn’t have to look far for people who were concerned about the same issue. Sophie, the student activities coordinator for all three universities on campus mentions one organization dubbed RAG – raising and giving – which was running in 2005/2006 but fell apart in 2006/2007 when the president decided to leave. “It's a similar story with lots of things…The general attitude seems to be that students want there to be more to do on campus, yet are unwilling to take the responsibility of organizing on themselves.”

The Student Voice (last year’s “The Pulp”) – the campus’ only student-run newspaper –has struggled to maintain itself without an editor or a core team of writers, despite more than 30 people signing up at the Fresher’s Fair (hence this slightly mish mash edition). In any case, this article isn’t meant to be a lecture on commitment or the value of reliability; it’s a call for change.

The connotations surrounding our title –student – are inspiring. We are the go-getters, the hard workers, the partiers, the protestors, the counter culture, the trouble makers, the list is endless. So why don’t we start acting like it? The apathetic student should be an oxymoron, not a state of affairs. Often people complain about the campus – there’s not enough going on, it’s boring – to which I say: how about we do something about it? How about we take some responsibility for our concerns and try and change things, that’s what students do.

Being a student should be about exploiting the small period of time in our lives where we are bombarded with opportunity to create, act, participate and change what’s around us. For my part, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to impose my opinions on others – what are you missing out on?