College students not blind to plight of others

For as long as I can remember, my dad has begun each morning by reading the newspaper. He even has a certain way of organizing the paper, particularly the Sunday edition. When my siblings and I were growing up, we would reach for the comics or the advertisements, but we always had to wait until my dad had finished taking out the sections and put them in order.

Today, it’s rare that you find someone in my generation who actively reads the news. Instead, most people get the news from social media, in short snippets on Facebook or in 140 characters for those on Twitter. I try to bring myself to a news website at least once a week, just to make sure I’m aware of the world around me. But even then, I find myself simply scanning the home page, rather than fully reading a detailed story. The “news” seems to always be something depressing: murder, violence, natural disasters, accidents, etc.

I started out my literature class teaching a Greek political comedy, Lysistrata, which involves Greek wives protesting against war and desiring to keep their husbands at home. About halfway through the semester, in March, when the Ukranian sex strike – women withholding sex from Russian men – came to light, my students saw reality paralleling fiction. While a little uncanny, it was certainly a learning experience in which I was able to assert the power of literature.

However, reality again collided in the classroom with the recent news of almost 300 Nigerian girls being kidnapped by terrorist group Boko Haram. Having just finished reading our last novel and discussing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, my students referred to the most recent kidnappings as another example of our post-9/11 world. The similarity revolved around the coordinated efforts around the world: the union of multitudes of people in protest over a single cause.

Two weeks ago, the phrase “#BringBackOurGirls” started a social revolution. Since its initial use, celebrities and everyday citizens have begun using the phrase on social media as a form of support to the victims and families of the Nigerian kidnapping. The goal of social media is to spread awareness, and it certainly seems to be fulfilling that goal when activist phrases become viral, arguably spreading awareness in a more prevalent way than “older” news outlets of the past. Today, “#BringBackOurGirls” and viral photographs of celebrities holding the phrase spread like wildfire in an attempt to force pressure on the Nigerian government to act and save the girls who could be sold into slavery. In today’s world, it no longer falls to politicians and government officials to act – instead, ordinary citizens are called to action, to raise awareness, and hopefully, one day, bring an end to acts of terrorism.

As these ideas were brought into discussion on our last day of class, I couldn’t help but feel proud of my students. Certainly, it seemed that they had come a long way from where they started in January, not only in terms of their analytical capabilities but, more importantly, in the ways in which they have begun to formulate their own viewpoints, applying the literature and themes that we’ve discussed all semester to their everyday lives.

Perhaps they aren’t the only ones who have taken away something from the semester: in watching them expand their horizons, I’ve begun to see that these young adults are committed to not only serve and act for another, but they are committed to envisioning a future in which solidarity and union are primary goals. Rather than being defined by tragedy, perhaps we are finally coming around to an activism that relies upon what we, as Christians, have always been called to do: to love and serve one another, to unite under a common goal of love.

Heather Bozant Witcher can be reached at [email protected].