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My Problem with University Students
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Ok, well, not all university students. Just some. And maybe it's not even university students. Maybe it's those types of people who label themselves "activists", or "environmentalists", or "socially aware". It seems to me that that is an all or nothing proposition. If you care about the environment, great! Reduce, reuse and recycle, all that jazz. And if that's just not a huge issue for you (for whatever reason), then okay! I can respect that, too. But I think that is one of those issues where you can't talk out of both sides of your mouth.

Case in point. I met this week with a woman for coffee. After initially making our arrangements, I received an email from her asking if we could switch venues to somewhere that sells fair-trade coffee. Sure thing. If that's something that you believe in, I'm more than happy to oblige. So we met, and she told me about a documentary she saw about fair trade, and thought it was just terrible that stores don't use fair trade products, etc, etc.

I know little about it, so I nodded and smiled, and sipped my coffee. I respect people (like my friend Vicks) who genuinely are passionate about their causes, and live their life accordingly. Vicki will quietly turn off lights when she knows they're not being used, she's vegetarian, she uses cloth bags, and the list goes on and on. She is not perfect - it's hard to be when you live in North America. But she does the best she can.

Back to the coffee. We had our coffee, we chatted, and parted ways. I had to run some errands, and then I headed home. As I walked home, in front of a series of windows at the mall, I saw Ms. Fair Trade EATING AT MCDONALDS.

Am I crazy, or is there a hipocracy there? I mean, McD's just seems to be on the completely opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to fair trade.

Sure, it's her choice, I get it. But to actively make a socially conscious choice, only to completely negate it a half hour later just makes me thing you're a big poser.



-- posted by Jenn at Wednesday, December 13, 2006

3 came

3 Comments:

Either:
a)Miss Fair Trade is choosing her battles and trying to make a difference in her own small way but still can't sacrifice the Big Mac

or

b)she's just ignorant and needs to be educated about McD's trade practices.

or

c) she doesn't really care and just wanted to pretend that she cared to make herself look better

I don't know this person, so it's hard to judge which of these three it's most likely to be.

I definitely understand your frustration

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:34 PM  

As a University student myself, I will say that many of us are surprisingly stupid. However, I feel that the ratio of stupid university students to non-stupid university students (I'm not going to push it and say "smart university students) is roughly the same ratio of stupid to non-stupid found in every other age bracket.
No matter what age you are, I think it always seems like the generations that follow you are exponentially more incompetent, but really it is only the idiotic ones we usually take note of.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:16 AM  

Yup, Megan, I think you're totally right. I do think that students typicall try harder to 'find themselves' or buy into certain schools of thought blindly without really thinking rationally about it. I think that might just come from lack of maturity.

And just to clarify, I was a stupid student once, and blathered on about half-cooked ideas, thinking I was going to change the world.

Although, maybe I'm still getting used to living in a 'university city'.

By Blogger Jenn, at 4:38 PM  

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