At the University of La Verne, especially in the departments that are immersed into current events, many professors open each class session with the question, “Did you hear anything interesting happen in the news?”
We are used to the silent response from our classmates as we look around the classroom, avoiding eye contact with the professor.
Either that, or the only news that students can bring up is a story that has to do with celebrity media, like Whitney Houston’s death.
Then the class continues with the professor explaining a controversial current event and asking for the class’ opinion on the topic. Those students that were once silent then suddenly have an opinion on a story they have never heard about.
ULV students are not in tune with what is going on in the world, but they have an opinion about anything that is thrown at them.
A student’s excuse for not paying attention to the news is that they think it is boring and irrelevant to his or her life. But what students fail to realize is the news is nearly always relevant to their lives.
Just because we sometimes do not understand what President Obama and Congress are considering for a bill, or for that matter what a bill is, does not mean the bill itself will not affect us.
Education bills may sound boring when you get into the nitty-gritty of them, but as students, and hopefully informed citizens, they affect us the most.
For example, legislation is currently trying to take Cal Grants away from private institutions of higher education. That would definitely affect University of La Verne students.
Politics may be boring until “Saturday Night Live” creates parodies of candidates, but listening to what the candidates are actually saying will help us make more informed decisions when November rolls around. For example, in the last presidential election, most people did not realize who the real Sarah Palin was because Tina Fey’s character on “Saturday Night Live” was more loveable and easier to remember.
If you do not know what is going on in the world, admittedly you can have an opinion, but you cannot have an informed opinion. Being informed is important because things that are happening in the world could affect us. If we are too busy doing things that are “more interesting” than paying attention to the news, a law or regulation could be passed in the government or something catastrophic could occur that affects everybody and we would not even know what had hit us.