Sometimes students just want to crash.
They pull late nights and all-nighters throughout the week to meet due dates and deadlines. When the weekend finally arrives, it’s time to sleep.
This past weekend, a group of students chose to forego those opportunities to rest and pursued a calling they viewed as higher. Hundreds of students from OU “kidnapped” themselves in mimicry of the real kidnappings of children in Uganda who are then forced to fight in Joseph Kony’s army (Google “invisible children” to understand how terrible that is.) The rally was an attempt to draw attention to the atrocities being committed in Uganda and to place that reality where lawmakers could not look away.
I want to praise these students for caring about the downtrodden thousands of miles away and acting on that compassion.
In addition to that, I think the OU community should face two crucial truths this event reveals.
First, students have an obligation to help others. Second, students have the ability to help others.
That doesn’t mean students have failed if they did not attend the rally Saturday (I didn’t go), but I think students are failing when they make a habit of neglecting the needs of others.
In America, altruism and charity are generally viewed as noble things, so I do not expect the majority of people to object to the two aforementioned truths.
Most may recognize that these are good and that “yeah, I need to do more than I’m doing now for my fellow humans…”
That being said, I want to encourage students to remember the poor and broken. If you think you have something valuable – a talent, a skill, a message, a material – think about how that can be dispensed to impact others’ lives.
Two warnings concerning humanitarian projects:
First, beware of loveless philanthropy. As a Christian, I adhere to the Paul’s charge that even if one gives up his or her own body, if it is done without love the action is committed in vain.
Readers may hold contention with this worldview, but I believe it is commonly understood that boastful givers are not as respectable as quiet ones and that people would rather take aid from a face without a scowl.
Real giving and loving entail each other and include sacrifice. So I think Paul’s standard holds credence in the realm of charity.
I also think serving others presents an opportunity to speculate on what some would call ‘capital T’ truths. These deal with questions like “Why serve?” “What importance does it have?” “Who deserves what?” And more.
Whether giving of one’s self, time and resources is an act of generosity that reflects a divine grace, or whether human charity is a subversion of filial and communal instincts wired into us by nature, this “big truth” discussion remains on the table.
That’s why the second area I want to wrap CAUTION tape around is the area where people callously turn from big questions like these.
Students do not have to be philosophers or biologists to speculate on these topics. So maybe these would be good things to think about while you serve.
The semester is winding down. As it does, don’t forget those people thousands of miles away or your neighbors a few yards away who need encouragement.
-Trevor Clark is a University College freshman.
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JJanowiak 3 years ago
Your claim that students are obligated and able to help others is debatable. It's a hard issue to think about because large-scale shifts in national policy about these kinds of things take a long time to happen and can be far more about the whims of a certain senator than a mass of students sleeping in front of the capital. Has anything come out of that besides some awareness? Awareness is worth something, but not much. So is the tiny amount of money college students are able to contribute to something like this.
Last I checked the Invisible Children movement hadn't really accomplished much of anything besides building a few schools and raising awareness enough so that most college students can at least recognize the name. That's nice because anything is better than nothing, but actually fixing the problem in Uganda is something that neither students nor the U.S. are going to solve. Unless you hold out some hope the U.N. is going to send a task force and inefficiently prevent the murder of people, Africa is going to have step in on its own.
But hey, every little bit helps - college students just shouldn't hold a naive view about how effective what their doing is.