As it does every year, last week NC State held a freshman convocation with the author of the common reading as the keynote speaker. This year’s book, “$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” took a look at extreme poverty affecting the United States. The guest speaker for this year was the co-author of the book, Kathryn Edin.
Edin gave a very substantive presentation about a subject matter that is wildly under-covered. In her speech, she gave harrowing accounts of some of the extremely impoverished people she had interviewed for the book. In addition to this, Edin provided ample amounts of data that stressed how pervasive the problem of extreme poverty truly is.
As interesting and informative as the presentation was, a substantial number of students attending convocation walked out in the midst of her speech. Most people would view this as students simply being rude to the guest speaker, but I see it as a much more grave problem than that. The people sitting in the audience of convocation are the ostensible leaders of our future. For them to walk out on a speech about one of the largest problems our country is facing is nothing less than an indictment on our society.
Instead of concentrating on Edin, the students who left Reynolds Coliseum engaged in the practice of escapism. Wikipedia defines escapism as “the avoidance of unpleasant, boring, arduous, scary, or banal aspects of daily life.” In some contexts, a moderate dose of escapism is not necessarily a bad thing. For problems that are completely out of our control, escapism can be a way of reducing stress. In this case, however, escapism should be heavily condemned, as simple, attainable methods of combating food insecurity on our campus were presented directly after Edin’s speech.
Many of the students that engaged in escapism likely thought that the speech was boring or that it did not affect them. While some students carelessly snubbed the speech, other students in the very same audience were listening to Edin talk about a problem they wished they could escape from.
Food insecurity is not just some abstract issue; it is something fellow classmates of ours have to grapple with every day. In her interview with Technician, Edin explained how she “met dozens and dozens of students who said ‘this was my story, and I’ve never been able to talk about it and I’ve always felt so ashamed.’”
Seeing the procession of students walk out on the performance was even more disappointing because of the irony of the situation. Convocation is typically a time where the new entrants into our school are told about how bright and special they are. The speakers tell them that it is they who are responsible for making our future a better place.
The motto we are told from the time we enter NC State to the day we walk across the graduation stage is to “think and do the extraordinary.” But how are we supposed to do this when some students cannot be bothered to think about the seriousness of extreme poverty and food insecurity for an hour?
The solution to the problem of escapism is a rather straightforward one. Students should not try to exit when being confronted with ongoing problems in the world. In order to create a better world for ourselves, we must have an understanding of the problems we face, which can only be achieved by paying attention to them. Even if we perceive a problem to be uninteresting or unrelated to ourselves, we owe it to the people afflicted by it to listen.
