"WE'RE LOSING our culture. We're losing our identity as a people." These were the words spoken to me Thursday night by a member of the local Tibetan community as Iserved as accused counsel at the University Judiciary Committee's first open trial. Here in the United States for six years, the man detailed the Chinese invasion and subsequent 40-plus-year occupation of Tibet. Before Thursday night, Tibet for me was simply a region that shared Mount Everest with Nepal and the Tibetan freedom movement was "just another cause" back in high school. Yet after conversing with several of the Tibetans after the trial, I learned not only about the struggle of Tibetans both here in Charlottesville and in Tibet, but also that our place in life -- as college students and as Americans -- often draws a curtain across the harsh realities of life in the third world.
During the school year, we live in a detached, sheltered and surreal piece of society. Most college students are hard-pressed to provide a detailed account of news in this country, let alone what goes on in the world. Even outside of the University, the truth is that the majority of students return to a suburban, usually middle- or upper-class setting devoid of poverty, famine, persecution and war. Compared to a fraternity mixer or an intramural football game, the plight of the Third World ranks relatively low on the average student's priority list. But inconvenience shouldn't be used as an excuse for personal ignorance.
Last year, the gross-domestic product of the United States was approximately $10.9 trillion, more than Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France combined. More staggering, the combined GDP of the world's 100 poorest nations was barely 3.5 percent of the U.S. GDP. No, the U.S. shouldn't sell off the Liberty Bell or the USS Carl Vinson to boost the economies of the Third World. Rather, the point is that the vast wealth of the United States makes it difficult to gain any perspective into life in the third world.
It's no coincidence that the sermon in church about the rich man who gives up all of his possessions for the poor makes everyone squirm in their seats. There's a reason we all feel guilty when lectured about materialism or the "me-first" culture; it's because we all are guilty to some degree of greed or possessiveness -- it is human nature. However, even if Americans are the most materialistic people in the world, they are also the most charitable, giving away billions of dollars every year. Furthermore, the United States as a nation is overwhelmingly the world's biggest purveyor of foreign aid. But is it enough to read about a crisis overseas, think "what a terrible thing," write a check and be done with it all in just a few minutes?
Last week, more than 1,500 people fell victim to Hurricane Jeanne in Haiti; 1.2 million people remained displaced from Dafur, Sudan; and nearly 200,000 children died preventable deaths worldwide. Surely, the lone actions of neither you nor I would have done anything to remedy these situations, but we owe them at least a moment of our attention or our thoughts.
Many of those who know me chuckled upon hearing the news that I was serving as accused counsel for Tibetan activist Rich Felker in his open UJC trial last week. Justifiably so; as mentioned before, my knowledge of the situation was scant and the plight of the Tibetan people ranked very low on my list of concerns. And though I'll probably never attend a Free Tibet demonstration, the interaction with actual Tibetans, those victim to the struggle, caused me to go home that night and spend a solid hour reading about the situation.
This is not meant to be a "holier-than-thou" opinion column. But today, or tomorrow or next week, take a minute between dinner at O-Hill and the "Real World" and educate yourself about Darfur, Tibet, child poverty, illiteracy or one of the dozen other plights billions in the Third World deal with on a daily basis that the students of this University will never have to face. Click the news link on CNN.com the next time a natural disaster hits the Third World. Make the most of a situation in which you deal with a person outside of your comfort zone. You'd be surprised; you might learn something about yourself.
Joe Schilling's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jschilling@cavalierdaily.com.
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