NOTES FROM THE DESK

Author: JACK LYSOHIR

I propose cable television for all students' rooms. Students would tune in to CNN to find a Supreme Court nominee who may well decide the fate of abortion. We would channel surf across party lines to watch Fox News cover the Iraq War as the American combat death toll perilously nears 2,000. And then we'd take a study break to watch John Stuart satirize the G.O.P.'s beleaguered leadership.

To be sure, the Internet allows students to tap into major news sources faster than ever before. However, it seems to me that more students are spending their time choosing their political affiliation on the facebook.com than actually reading the news. Although only 61 students choose "Apathetic" as their political view, I believe that apathy is exactly the view that the Middlebury community has embraced.

Middlebury students and faculty are a sympathetic group as evidenced by recent aid for Katrina's victims. But institutional sympathy and individual apathy are not mutually exclusive. One recent example of school apathy was last week's lecture by State Senator Peter Welch, a candidate for Congress, to a crowd of seven students and zero faculty members. The irony was all too palpable when he mentioned, "I need Middlebury College's support to win this seat." Another example concerns this paper; this fall the opinions section has received merely two unsolicited submissions from students and none from faculty.

Some say that the opportunity cost of attending a lecture or writing an opinion is too high (say, earning an 85 instead of an 89 on your microeconomics exam). But I believe it is our duty as members of this intellectual community to be informed and engaged in the world outside of Middlebury. And the College can facilitate a more informed school by having television in rooms, more newspapers in dining halls and encouraging faculty members to attend lectures and promote dialogue.

Middlebury's famed peaks of academic excellence, of which school literature often brags "are as varied as the green mountains,"should not be confined to those very same mountains.