Jonathan Martin Goddard's diary

So, I should probably do the polite thing and introduce you to my shiny new blog, but you're not really that interested, and I don't really want to waste yours and my time by writing personal nonsense that is both irrelevant and boring.
So, without further ado, a rant about apathy from the archives of unpublished material by me:

    Apathy is, and has been for a very long time, a big deal for Students' Unions and political parties alike. It's getting to the point where people are so apathetic, they don't know what apathy is. To quote an NUS publication, apathy is defined as "indolence of mind, indifference to what is calculated to move the feelings, or to excite interest or action". It's really easy to go down the route of "nobody told me", or "I didn't know", or "I don't understand it", but if you look past that, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people hide behind a carefully constructed wall of ignorance to protect them from tough decisions.   

    One of the more "Leftist" arguments to why apathy is so rife in general is that the economic boom of the 1980s produced a generation of materialist consumers, bred to buy and satisfy their every want. It has its appeal, but I prefer to hope that at least some students are socially aware. There is an awful lot of complaint without action now though, and it is a symptom of our new service culture, wanting everything now and cheap. We're really frittering away the greatest gift of the technology age here, the internet. It's the greatest tool for getting educated and getting your views out to other people. Most people use it to, let's face it, look at other peoples' bits, and funny cats with captions, in between checking your Facebook every five minutes.  But used correctly, it's your very own press office and presswire in one, if you know what you're doing.   

    I know a lot of students who are stung by that old chestnut of a stereotype, the drinking, stinking, beans-on-toast-munching, Diagnosis-Murder/Neighbours/Simpsons/This Morning-watching layabout. It's pretty obvious that most students aren't like that, but who among us can honestly say they've fully stood up and proven them wrong? Should we revel in a stereotype, especially one so damaging?It's only a small example, but it's true. Another example, for your consideration...

...If the Union decided to stop four sabbatical officer's positions and raise the price of snakebite to £2.50 a pint, what would get the most protests?
Honestly?
Exactly.
The sabbs do a hell of a lot for us as students, but heads would roll if drinking was affected, and that's just the way it is. It wouldn't take an awful lot to change it, but as the cash register manual says of the cash drawer, "Change comes from within." Before any organisation can encourage activism, we have to look within ourselves and find the guts to do something bold.

    If we look back in history, students across the world have laid down their lives for a principle, from Kent State in 1970, to the Burmese Student Uprising of 1988, to the famous Tiananmen Square Protests in China in 1989. Students have been involved in real democratic change in recent years too. In Ukraine, the Orange Revolution succeeded mostly due to student activism. I look at actions like these and wonder why we can't take the time to protest the biggest outrage of recent times, the Iraq War. If we even did one protest, every student as one, we could send a clear signal to the world. If only to honour the fallen students of the past, or show solidarity with suffering students in places like Burma.

    Taking action is tough, but it's worth doing. People often say "I can't make a difference, I'm one person, I'm no-one." We've all been there, but the Union is there to give us a voice and fight our corner. The NUS has been fighting against tuition fees and campaigning for the reinstatement of student grant. If every student put their voices to the shout, went to protest at Parliament Square, would we still be borrowing thousands of pounds a year?

    And it's not just the NUS that's there. We're lucky enough to belong to a university full of enthusiastic and exciting societies, dying to show you how to make a change, waiting to give you a voice and meet new people too. Nobody's asking you to risk your life to make a point, but a day out of your life is a small price to pay for the opportunity to take a stand and make your voice heard.

Comments have been closed for this article

 

 

nice one x

elle gray - Sat, 15 Dec 2007

 

 

Unfortunately the NUS is not fighting against tuition fees or for the reinstatement of the student grant; that policy has been abandoned in favour of a 'keep the cap' policy whereby the NUS is campaigning to keep the current maximum price (£3070 per year) in operation.  
 
This policy suggests that the NUS leadership believes the current system gives students a good deal, I doubt many of the NUS's members believe that however.  
 
Tuition fees are an economic time bomb that will go off when former students begin paying such a high proportion of their income into loan repayments that they have little disposable income to spend in the rest of the economy.

Morys Ireland - Sun, 16 Dec 2007

 

 

You're exactly right. The top-up fees are a scam, really. I suppose in my case it's slightly less bad in that case, as I have to pay up in advance, but it's still not perfect.  
Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Jonathan Goddard - Tue, 18 Dec 2007

 

 

Don't forget whats happened in France recently, the student activists brought up bollards, strikes and awareness within a few days when their rights were affected. 
 
Its hard sometimes to get people on a whole to move if they arent used to, and youre right, it has to come from within, and from passing on information in every way possible that will reach (and be understood) by as many as possible.  
 
x

Tallie Kane - Fri, 28 Dec 2007