Another Perspective: Looking Beyond WMU

For about a month now there has been a huge movement going on called Occupy Wall Street. All over the U.S. people occupy their main streets. Come on, you must have heard of this! I’m sure you’ve read about the protests somewhere, maybe you even liked them. But do you care? I mean, do you really, really care?
 
I already read about the appeal of Occupy Wall Street two months ago, back home in Germany. And I was so excited. I felt like there was something big going on and I was moving to the U.S., the very center of it. I looked up the organisations which organized the protests and I was convinced to join them. I felt like I wasn’t only on my way to the U.S., but as if I was on my way to a real revolution.
 
I left my home, I flew to Michigan, I arrived at WMU – and I instantly forgot about all of my plans. I had more important things to do: study, make friends, cope to a new environment, have fun.
 
But now, more than a month later, I suddenly find myself missing something. I simply miss politics. In Germany I studied political science, I was an active member of a political student organisation, I spent three hours per day reading the newspapers and three more hours discussing with my friends what I just read. Believe me, it’s not exaggeration if I say politics were my life.
 
So, what happened? I could easily start discussing politics here, too, couldn’t I?

Well, I tried. Occasionally, in conversation, I throw in a statement or a thought about current political events or even about my fundamental political beliefs. Usually I just get a confused look before everyone just gets back to their current topic – food, parties, missing home or whatever we’ve just been talking about. Sometimes people even tell me directly: “I’m sorry but I’m really not interested in that stuff.” Mostly they just smile and nod in order to be friendly and not hurt my feelings.
 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally okay with that. No one can be interested in everything. But I wonder why so many students, who are after all the ones in the place where they could actually change something, don’t care about politics.
 
I’m sure there are people at Western, a lot of them, who live and die for politics, exactly like I did. Maybe I just haven’t met them yet. I guess in the end, it’s the same in every country and every city, no matter where you go. The world is somehow divided in people who are passionate about politics (and who, at the same time, mostly study political science) and people who just don’t care about this stuff.
 
Nevertheless I think it’s much easier to lose interest in these kinds of things over here at Western than at many other universities, at least the ones I know from Germany. I mean, even I, who had very strong political ideals in the past, lost my passion for them the day I arrived at Western. I still check the news two times per week, but I feel like nothing that I read there will ever really affect me.
 
So please just take a minute, go out, have a walk over the campus and just look around. Look at all the small streets, look at the coffee shops. Look at the tables and couches in the Bernhard Center, look at the small pond in front of the valleys. Maybe you haven’t realized it, but we are living in a perfect world. If I could choose how paradise shall look like, our campus would be very close to what I’d choose. Just sit down in front of Miller Auditorium one nice day, when the sun is shining and the water fountain is turned on. And then try to think of all the homeless people in big cities like Chicago or New York, or maybe only think of the ones here in downtown Kalamazoo. They exist; no one will deny that there are homeless people, that there is poverty and injustice. We all know that, even if we are sitting at the most beautiful place in the world. But it seems so unreal, so far away from our beautiful campus, from our little perfect world.
 
After all, there are still a few times when I find myself in the middle of a discussion about politics. Sometimes I speak with students from less wealthy families about the cuts in financial aid. Sometimes I talk with a gay friend about legalisation of gay marriage, or with a future or past soldier about changes in military policies. And while I do so, I wonder why we always only care about things which affect us directly. It’s not too much work, to – just for a minute – look beyond our own, personal problems, beyond the borders of beautiful WMU. Is it? 

Editor: Helena Witzke