CAMPUS CORRESPONDENCE : The Bogyman Gagging Students Isn’t the PC Issue--It’s Apathy

Cleaning off my desk after completing my senior thesis, I came across a war. Crammed between piles of books and stacks of notecards was a slightly yellowed, Jan. 17, 1991, edition of the Daily Californian, the university-oriented newspaper for which I worked last semester. “U.S. Attacks Iraq” was the headline.

Another saved paper, also yellowing, was the New York Times. “Bush Halts Offensive Combat; Kuwait Freed, Iraqis Crushed,” proclaimed its five-column headline on Feb. 28, 1991.

The war memorabilia didn’t end there. I found my temporary membership card from the Coalition for America at Risk. As a “supporting member,” I had been asked to donate $100 to “get the word out to other freedom-loving Americans” who were “outraged by Saddam Hussein and other terrorist murderers.”

There was also my complimentary “Stop the War!” bumper sticker, which, along with a sales pitch from a progressive magazine, had arrived on my doorstep three weeks after the war ended. Luckily, it’s generic enough to save for the next war.

Newspaper articles, bumper stickers and, of course, CNN were about as close as most of today’s college graduates got to the Persian Gulf War. We had few, if any, friends or relatives serving in the Gulf. The war was too short to arouse fears of a new draft.

On the Berkeley campus, a small, but vocal, activist community had tried to build opposition to the war. A still smaller number of students had sported yellow ribbons or American flags on their backpacks or jackets. The vast majority, apparently, were stilled by the dreaded “political correctness” question. Even President George Bush worries that PC may destroy academic freedom across the nation.

But does the PC plague really explain the students’ silence?

Hardly. The PC debate is an intellectual placebo swallowed to quell student feelings of political ineptitude and grass-roots ignorance. Unable to keep pace with national and international events and lacking historical perspective, students seek substitutes--like which paper shopping bag is best for the environment--for serious thinking.

My generation of students seems convinced that individual action and idealism are relics. This spring, the overwhelming majority of UC students humbly accepted an unprecedented 36% increase in tuition fees--more than $600 a year. That the governor and Board of Regents made public education more exclusive by making it more expensive didn’t alarm students. In contrast, as recently as the mid-1980s, students at Berkeley successfully fought for a rollback of a similar fee increase. No comparable movement developed last semester.

Apathy thus seems the greater danger on campuses today. Students are hardly thinking about the country’s pressing problems: environmental degradation, educational mediocrity, limited and inadequate health- and child-care options. They are not picking up the baton passed on from generation to generation.

The reason, I believe, is that society no longer encourages, let alone rewards, idealism in its youth. Competition, rather than cooperation, sets the tone of the learning--and living--environment. Until there is open discussion of these kinds of problems, it is difficult to see how students will begin to ask the right questions.

As for myself, I filed away the “Stop the War” bumper sticker. I would have returned my membership card to the Coalition for America at Risk, but all I had were 25-cent stamps.

And the newspapers ended up in the recycling pile, of course. It’s good for the environment.