editorial Just what the doctor ordered old fashioned protests combat apathy

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Students gathered Tuesday in Ross Dining Hall to make their voices heard as the U.S. Marine Corps recruited on campus. Outraged at the College's decision to allow an organization that discriminates against homosexuals to come to Middlebury, protestors focused their efforts on the College's recruitment policies and called for President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz to make good on his promise earlier in the semester to encourage discussion about the issue. The lunchtime protest was staged in front of the small table where a lone Marine Corps officer was stationed.

Tuesday's protest was a heartening example of students' ability to mobilize quickly around an issue they care about. This sort of mobilization is all too infrequent on a campus where students complain perennially that Middlebury's student body is apathetic. When the relative merits or evils of intercollegiate Quidditch incites more heated debate than the war in Iraq or climate change or the American health care system, such accusations of apathy ring true. The ailment is not unique to Middlebury, however, as Thomas L. Friedman suggested in an op-ed last month in The New York Times. Friedman termed ours "Generation Q, calling us the Quiet Americans. " "I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be," he wrote of students our age. "I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be."

What's at the root of Middlebury's apathy? While our geographic location does lend itself to isolation, students have countless opportunities to engage with the outside world, but we choose too often to ignore these chances. The same faces appear again and again at lectures or open forums on campus, and most students only gaze half-heartedly - if at all - at the national newspapers littering our dining hall tables.

Is it our seemingly insurmountable workload keeping our protest signs tucked away in our closets? From our carrels in the library or our labs in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, we gaze at our full date books and wonder where a bit of activism will fit in between class and sports practices and interviews for internships and work-study jobs. We join a Facebook group or sign an online petition and hurry off to stand in line for Chicken Parmesan at Proctor.

Is the problem more endemic? Are the problems facing our "quiet" generation so daunting that protest seems impossible or ineffective?

Ultimately, the causes of our collective apathy are less important than the ways in which we choose to combat this apathy. As it turns out, the best answer is the tried and true one.

While students mobilized this summer virtually - and effectively - to express their discontent at the College's new logo, this sort of online mobilization pales in comparison to the effect warm bodies and raised voices can have on a community. Students who put aside their books two weeks ago to make the trek to Washington D.C. for Power Shift understood the necessity of real and not virtual activism. So did members of the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA) who, on relatively short notice, organized Tuesday's protest. A little old-fashioned activism can go a long way, especially on a campus inundated by e-mail.

In an encouraging gesture, members of the College administration responded in kind to Tuesday's gathering. Rather than post to their blogs, administrators put in a little much-needed face time at the Ross, speaking both with students and the Marine recruiter. Most students piling into the dining hall were looking for lunch and little more. Those who paused to look on, though, noticed that a few Quiet Americans were opening their mouths.