Student apathy was in full force yesterday afternoon when less than 15 students showed up for a town hall-style meeting with Chancellor Sean O’Keefe. This was especially galling due to the fact that many students have expressed outrage over having to make up Monday’s cancelled classes on the first day of fall break. We would like to believe that if the location of the meeting hadn’t been changed, or if the forum had been held at a different time, things would have been different. But we are not naive enough to believe that any of this would have made a difference. The truth is the majority of students at the University see themselves as powerless to change anything. This feeling of powerlessness has led to their becoming apathetic and has destroyed any hope of real student input. This is not to say that these students don’t really care, but perhaps it is simply that they have simply lost faith in a system they see as too monolithic and impregnable to their attempts to get involved. This is not the fault, at least entirely, of the administration. Like all bureaucracies, the University is largely sedentary, and has little hope of directly addressing individual student needs. Instead, students should look to themselves. If they want answers, they should write, e-mail and question those who are responsible for their situations. We should look to ourselves and wonder, why we act the way we do and why we believe that we are unable to change anything. Students have a duty, the duty of their generation, to stand up and ask questions – to think out loud. We, salute those who do have the guts to stand up – and hope more do. What this means is that students need to start going to these press conferences, town halls and lectures. If they have questions, they should not merely discuss them with their friends, but go out and get their answers. If they aren’t satisfied with the answers, then they should pursue the truth. Our University is a training ground for life. Let us treat it as our proving ground – building our skills as citizens and as thinking men and women. Only by doing this will we truly know what it means to think and be alive.