I recently roused myself for class at the early hour of 9 a.m.,
only to be informed by a perfectly-coifed anchorwoman that
NBC’s “Later Today” was already under way.
Later, eh?
Well apparently, NBC’s “later” is not my
“later,” considering that College Bylaw 2.14 (Section
VI) clearly classifies “later” as “not one minute
before the 12 o’clock hour.” But I hear that in the
curiously dubbed real world (was everything up until now fake?), my
sense of “later” no longer flies, nor do my two-hour
lunches and extended weekends.
What struck me most about that “Later Today”
incident was the fact that “later” is too often our
generation’s answer to the world today. When will we actively
repair our ailing planet? Later. When will we contribute to
fighting social injustices? Later. When we finally have the time to
think about it, later becomes too late.
As generation Y, Z, or whatever letter we’re on now,
we’ve been notoriously branded as apathetic and disenchanted
with the system (not that we don’t have some reason to be).
And as a part of the Daily Bruin’s Viewpoint section for
quite some time, I’ve been privy to the undercurrent of
student opinion on some rather salient issues over the past several
years. Invariably, the recurrent theme is not social action ““
rather, the lack thereof. As long as our comfortable Westwood
bubble doesn’t pop, all is well in the world.
Meanwhile, the evils of the world rage on. I speak not of some
cartoonish evil, but the types of vices that assume many forms:
racism, homophobia, over-consumption, political abuse, mass human
extermination and environmental annihilation.
I guess that’s what college does to you. We blindly
coexist in our hermetically sealed world for a period of (insert
the appropriate number here) years. Hundreds upon thousands of
ethnic Albanians can be persecuted. A massive middle-class uprising
can occur at a WTO Conference. Hell, a fire could break out one
block south of Wilshire, but within the confines of our Westwood
world, our vision and our conscience often remain confined to the
self.
After all, we are the descendants of the “me”
generation, and at the university level we’ve possessed every
reason to focus on ourselves. During these make-it-or-break-it
years we’ve been building toward our futures, and quite a bit
weighs on our ultimate performance.
Then again, what our impending graduation signals is the moving
beyond “me.” In fact, soon, we will have little
“mini-me”s to worry about and provide for. (Kind of
makes you want to chuck the cap and gown and stay in college
another five years.)
What I hope, though, is that we can swap those first letters,
changing the “me” to “we,” and in the
process, change our attitudes and commitment toward our future.
Given the stellar name that UCLA will carry for us the rest of our
lives, we owe those less fortunate who are without such a powerful
insignia to give back.
In two words: Do something, because not only will your silence
be construed as acceptance, but it will confirm the premature label
our generation is fighting so hard to cast off.
As the philosopher Edmund Burke keenly observed, “All that
is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do
nothing.” Do not let this adage fall on deaf ears, or most
assuredly our “later” will indeed be too late.