Recently, I was asked the question: “What’s going on at Furman?” I pondered a moment before realizing: It was nothing. Our university seems to be under a spell of complacency inside and outside the classroom. The Furman “Bubble” is pervasive, and as a student body, we should be more engaged so that term no longer applies.
As a freshman, you try to get a feel for everything: attending parties, being socially engaged with people on your halls (though agoraphobia seems to actually be a real problem at Furman). You come to the small school hoping for a different perspective than all your friends or based on your parents’ recommendation. But the trap has been set: the advertisements of a small school with Greenville just around the corner (15 minutes away—better hope you’ve got a car and some change). You soon realize that there is not that much to do.
There is just something plain about Furman. People are won over by the beautiful campus and over-photographed Belltower before realizing that there is an aura of complacency here. Students at Furman seem to be content simply going to class, coming back to the dorms, perhaps attending some parties on the weekend, and then blowing up their Instagram feed with how beautiful our “one of a kind” lake is.
I am well aware of what Furman advertises—that people “love” Furman students for how engaged they are with the Greenville community, how much they do in the world, and how they change things for the better. But if you peer a little closer and ask around, the majority of people are not actually doing that. We are a small school, so the selective number of students that are incredibly engaged with the world stands out as a shining representation of the Furman student body, which is great! What should happen is that people should emulate them so that more students are having this same level of engagement and impact.
The lack of student voices in the political scene is a profound representation of the intellectual complacency here. I am not calling for Berkeley style riots—those are dangerous and hypocritical—but I am simply asking that people understand that their Facebook rants about Trump and tweets about the administration do literally nothing but make people laugh. Simply “feeling” like a good person and denouncing those who do not match your ideology does not actually make you a good person. If you are so concerned about the downtrodden, go out and help them!
Robert Putnam’s famous book Bowling Alone shows community service has decreased heavily, and the entitled millennial generation does nothing to help out. Taking pictures at the Women's March has little impact. Founding an actual organization, putting in lots of time and effort into stabilizing it—that is what makes a difference.
Furman only has one newspaper. Do students really want Wake Forest and other schools with multiple papers to edge us out? Furman propagates this marketing tool that we are akin to some Ivy League level school, and Furman students make that message an actual reality. You cannot boast about being a Furman student if all you are is a student. You have to be an active agent in the world.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was disdainful of the society around him because of their interpretation of Christian doctrine. According to clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, Nietzsche believed that the Apostle Paul watered down Jesus’ message to be an imitation for us to follow: just “be a good person.” Like Nietzsche, I feel that a “watered down” attitude of what it means to be a good student is highly prevalent at Furman. Being a good student does not mean studying multiple hours of the day, getting a summer internship, and being nice to people. It means making a difference in the world and not stopping even after you have. College is not simply training for the real world—we are living in the real world. To students here I say, use your time wisely, you only live once.