As Christmas shopping, finals and holiday travel lead to us all stressing out, it’s easy to lose track of how lucky we are as students at the University. It’s hard to sit down and engage in an introspective analysis of your life when you have several papers, tests and extracurricular events all jammed into the last week before break, so I’m going to save you some time. You are one of the more fortunate people in the world. You go to a world-class University when less than 7 percent of the world has a college degree. You are probably not part of the almost 50 million Americans who live in food-insecure households. You are certainly not part of the 14 percent of Americans who can’t read. And you live in the wealthiest nation on the planet that, while far from perfect, still provides a level of liberty and equality of opportunity approached by few nations in the world. I could go on, but I think you get the point: no matter how stressed you are, you have it pretty good.
Why is it important to realize just how privileged you are? Not just because it reminds you that 14 percent of Americans can’t read, that 50 million Americans don’t get enough food or that most of the world doesn’t have the option to go to school through age 21, but because it reminds you that you are in a position to help solve those problems. You have the ability to use your educational opportunities to help address social, economic and other imbalances. You are not only in a position of privilege: you are also in a position of power to give back to those not as lucky as you and to help remove the barriers that prevent them from being more well-off.
So what can you do? You can sacrifice a meal on the Corner to buy some non-perishables to donate to the interfaith food drive currently operating on Grounds to benefit the Charlottesville Emergency Food Bank. Food items can be dropped off at St. Thomas Aquinas Church just up the street from O-Hill, the Wesley Foundation or Hillel at University Circle. Or, if you can’t get to the grocery store, you can contribute a few dollars to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank at brafb.org — which can provide four meals for every dollar you give. You can volunteer through Madison House or the Boys and Girls Club and mentor a local student who needs help in school. Or you can find a completely different way to give back to the local community that supports our University.
I’d also like to encourage everyone to think about the people who don’t have or are losing some of the privileges you take for granted. Because of the cuts to AccessUVa, many students who would have been able to attend the University previously may go to other schools or not attend college at all. Signing the petition for the Board of Visitors to restore all-grant aid is a small way you can show how thankful you are to be here. If you’re a fourth year, you can also join Student Council’s campaign give a small amount of money with the stated intent to fund AccessUVa as part of your class gift.
So please — before you go back to writing that paper or studying for that test — take a minute to think about what you’re thankful for and how you can give back some of that good fortune to the people around you. It might just make that test seem like not such a big deal after all.
Forrest Brown is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. His columns run Thursdays.
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