Ahh to be young and know it all again.

So I got a two sentence e-mail from an old college buddy the other day. It said, "I just read part of the current issue of the Argus. [our alma mater's student newspaper] Oh my God, were we ever that full of ourselves; not to mention full of s**t? " I assured him that we indeed both full of ourselves and quite full of s**t. At the time that we were in school, we knew everything about everything. Too bad we get stupider with age.

That being said, now to write to the issues in the Argus. Without discussing it with my friend, I'm guessing at some of the articles to which he objected. There is the front page article that starts with, "While other IWU students were relaxing at home or at the popular Spring Break hot spots, 12 other students and I spent our week building homes." While a commendable activity (one that I know a couple of my cousins and friends volunteer for on a quarterly basis....without fanfare), this opening seems to drip with condescension. It then goes on to report how the author spent 7 whole hours a day doing manual labor, disregarding the fact that she'll get to go home at the end of her week; leaving those whose homes she worked on to stay in that desparate situation. I would have hoped that she would have found compassion and empathy instead of apparently just taking away a feeling of superiority. Perhaps it is just her style of writing and perhaps it really was a humbling experience, but it was not portrayed in her article.

Next article, I'm guessing, might be the Op-Ed piece on Newt Gingrich's call for English as the national language of the United States. I had to chuckle at this one because I wrote the same type of editorial when I was in school. I wrote it as a letter to then Senator Inouye from Hawaii who sent me a fund-raising letter asking to support his organization proposing exactly what Newt's saying. This, I think, is due to inexperience and youth. I felt, as does the writer, that this movement alienates the immigrant. Instead, it is meant to integrate the immigrant. It's great that there is ESL in our schools (of questionable educational success by the way), but how does that help the parents get by in the workplace, marketplace, or any other public area. By making it well known that English will be the working language for all who live here, it gives the same incentive to learn as it has for over 200 years. The US is indeed the "melting pot" which means all the items in the pot are absorbed into one common metal, sharing common beliefs, ideals, and language. It does not mean that the individual components remain individual and separate.

Lastly, I'm fairly certain that he objected to the pointless, mean-spirited, and disrespectful piece entitled, "From Passion to Peeps in two thousand years". My friend being a Chaplain "in the trenches" in Iraq would most certainly object to This drivel. It seems to be written by a college student who has just been exposed to the idea that perhaps the Bible is indeed an interpretive collection of peoples' understanding of how God has acted in the human condition instead of the inerrant word of God. As is typical with college students, he seems to feel that he is the first to realize this fairly common knowledge and wants to "correct" all the "erroneous" beliefs that people have held for centuries. Instead of recognizing the importance that these words have had to people around the world throughout the centuries (probably the majority of whom are not "the whole middle-class family"), he writes a mean-spirited condemnation of anyone he apparently feels is stupid enough to have believed in the divinity of Christ.

Regardless of the veracity of the writing, Diego, it has been the impetus and guiding light for millions of people for thousands of years. The message of "hope and good-will" (and so much more) has sustained people in hopeless situations and desparate times over and over again. If you don't believe the story (and theologians are very aware that much of it could be fabricated or exaggerated....you're not telling us anything new) that's ok, but have enough respect for the people who do believe and have spent their lives devoting themselves to it, to not write such trash as you have in your article.

At this point, I stopped reading the paper. It was confirming a theme that I've written about here on several occasions. We are becoming more self-absorbed and more self-important by the day. We are losing respect for ourselves and each other. We are losing the ability to see the other's point of view or situation in life. Please, IWU, don't forget your United Methodist roots and continue to strive to educate your youth about the need to understand the human condition. The need to feel for others and to understand the effect of your actions and words, even if they're just in a student newspaper to a limited audience, because you'll never know when a soldier in Iraq, some guy in New Jersey, or anyone else may read it, and it will affect them. You want to make sure it affects them in the way you intended.

Thoughts anyone?