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College Comment
After the Impact
November
2001
by Colleen Kinder '03
Colleen
Kinder lives in Morse College. This essay is adapted from one that
appeared in the Yale Herald.
I remember
going to a Master's tea freshman year that featured a famous journalist
who offered his audience the following parting advice: "Keep up
on world events and take the time to read what is going on outside
of your campus gates." He warned us of the danger of ignorance in
the "college bubble." His words have since been a source of guilt
for me -- guilt that I know more about my University's administration
than the American president's, and guilt that I have no idea where
the last earthquake hit.
Other
than the handful of us who keep the Washington Post as their
home page, we students are completely cut off from the world in
which we live. And in today's global society, we have no excuse
-- we barely have to move a finger to get the news. But regardless,
we choose to be uninformed. We read every word of a two-page article
about Yale's Tercentennial gala, but only skim a short one about
the latest United Nations conference.
| |
"Keep
up on world events and take the time to read what is going
on outside of your campus gates."
|
We take
in every bit of what Yale offers us -- wonderful people, amazing
professors, seemingly limitless resources, diverse opportunities,
service to a city. We have plenty -- too much, even -- to take in
at Yale, and only four fleeting years to do it.
The
bubble was a grand place to be until three commercial jets crashed
into the side of it and woke me from my peaceful slumber on September
11. I stared at images of a familiar skyline filled by gray smoke,
and had only one question: "Why?" What could have happened since
I stepped out of the world to make someone take such extreme action
against my country? More questions were to follow as I realized
that I knew so little about foreign affairs that I couldn't make
the least bit of sense out of the loss of thousands of New Yorkers.
I envied classmates who could cite U.S. policy decisions as possible
impetus for the attack. In fact, I envied anyone who knew who this
Osama character was at all.
I longed
for awareness and resolved to never lose hold of it so completely
again. I saw that awareness not only allows us to comprehend, but
also to empathize and let a distant catastrophe resonate in our
own lives. It has been easy to be unaffected by news of a mudslide
in El Salvador, but it will never be easy again. Not now that I
have watched thousands of fellow citizens crushed in an instant;
not now that I have come home to hysterical friends. We all, unfortunately,
now have faces to put beside the numbers.
It
is clear to all of us now that we have no magic shield around us,
our country is not impervious to attacks, and we cannot, even if
we try to, live in a bubble.  |
