In support of Blog Action Day

Do we all honestly believe that somehow, by being a student here at Rhodes University, we are exempt from worrying about the national crisis that is poverty in South Africa? Every day passes and another dining hall meal is taken for granted as the food is wasted. Money is needlessly spent on pointless items and alcohol as 2 meters outside the door of the Rat a young, hungry child waits for his next 5 rand to put towards bread.

The assumption is that most middle income teenagers will move on to a tertiary education and the lucky few will make it to Rhodes, yet when the acceptance letter arrives there seems to set in an attitude of keeping our eyes closed. Is the point of going to university not that we are supposed to open our eyes? First year is treated as a baptism of fire into the culture of university; however this culture is being confused with a constant mood of ignorance, arrogance and lack of responsibility. When the topic of most conversations at the Kaif is about what’s going on that night and “who was so drunk” the night before while we eat copious amounts of junk food and throw it in the bin, while not a kilometer away families are not sure when the next meal will come.

However who can be to blame for the lack of caring on the students’ part about the poverty around us and in the country? The students themselves might have taken a oblivious attitude towards the situation and palmed off and feeling of responsibility to someone else with the phrase “oh, someone else will do it.” Commonly thrown around without any thought or conscientiousness, the blame must lie with students; we can no longer live by the idea that somebody else will tell us what to do or where to go. If we are old enough to consume alcohol and deeming ourselves responsible enough to live our own way, then surely it is on us as the “future leaders” to take a stand and actually pay attention to the world around us. No parent, teacher, lecturer or any person for that matter can truly take any responsibility for us as young adults not fulfilling a service we owe to the poverty stricken of our country. An example of the lack of responsibility felt by students is the lack of response by JMS 1 students to the blog action day. This action towards showing solidarity did not take any special effort and in fact can be labeled as an easy task; yet uninterested 1st years palmed it off and didn’t think twice about contributing towards the action. This points out in general the lack of acute awareness we as students are personifying and allowing to creep into out demographic description.

It is never too late for us to finally make our mark on the problem of poverty, we are a powerful demographic and know that in numbers we can change the world, so we’ve changed it for ourselves; it’s about time we change it for someone else.