I am going to be extremely blunt when saying this: People do not care.
“But Trevor, I care! I care about things,” you may say. But be honest with yourself here, do you? Do you really? When was the last time you looked at the news and got outraged instead of saying, “Oh, same stuff as always”?
I will say it again: People do not care. A lot of people see the recent news and just say “meh,” then go about their day. Even I have to admit, I have done the same thing. I have looked on my phone, watched some egregious news and my next thought was, “Okay, but I have class now.”
In my opinion, the only people who care anymore are the ones causing the problems. I never see protesters on campus talking about trans rights or holding signs protesting ICE.
Do you know what I always see? Turning Point setting up tables and booths, ambushing people trying to eat or run to class just to preach their words. Most often, their messages are telling people to support ICE, fight against the rights of LGBTQ+ people and to bow down to God.
I find it sad to see that nobody tries to stand up for what they believe in unless it is a message of hatred. More often than not, the most vocal group is the one that wants everyone to be violent and hateful towards everyone else.
The world needs people to care about bad things more. It is the reason nobody likes to vote. Why bother voting if the bad stuff will happen anyways? Well, that is the headspace of someone who has given up.
If you decide to not pick a side, that is picking a side, the side of everyone doing bad things. Being carefree is also being careless. If you treat everything like it is all sunshine and rainbows, you will never notice the knife in your back.
All I can say in the end is that we need to care more. The apathy this campus, and likely the entire world, shows towards the atrocities happening in this day and age is the very reason the atrocities keep happening. We have become desensitized to it all.
We need to start protesting again, we need to show that we will not take any of this sitting down. We need to be angry, not at each other, but at every wrong-doer that tries to trample on our rights as people.
