As the year comes to a close and I find myself in the Collegian office for the last time, I find myself filled with a strange kind of calm. I’ve been through the eight stages of grief (anger, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, anger, acceptance and anger) and now I’m filled with a curious kind of empty feeling, like something has been resolved.
And yet it has not. I’d like to add yet another sappy goodbye letter to the student body about how formative my time at TU has been, and how grateful I am, but to be honest, I have a serious bone to pick with the TU student body.
What the fuck is it with you people? Why don’t you care about anything? Why do you insist on making this an unreasonably apathetic campus?
When Trey Barnett was suspended, no one cared. When that girl got raped by a basketball player and he got away with it, no one cared. None of you care that the price of tuition keeps rising while the president of our university pulls an enormous salary. Does it not disturb your sleep to know that TU would throw you under the bus if it meant they kept getting those sweet sweet alumni donations? Or that you could get suspended for something someone else did? Or that this university is ranked one of the worst in the nation for free speech?
No, none of that stuff bothers you. Why would it? It probably won’t affect you, so all you have to do is keep your head down and get that degree so you can get that sweet cubicle job in some engineering firm. Well, I hope you’re happy with your lives. You’ve certainly sacrificed a lot for them.
I just wish that every time we published something about how our system is broken (or rather, designed to serve the school at the expense of the students) I didn’t already know that most of you wouldn’t bother reading it, or care about it if you did. So thank you, TU student body, for preparing me for the real world, where no one cares and all of your efforts are meaningless.
Of course I’m exaggerating, but not by much. I’m grateful for the Collegian, because if I hadn’t met this crowd of rabble rousers I probably would have ended up just as apathetic as you, and what kind of life would that be?
