Really, TCU, toilet paper?
Some blogs are carefully researched and organized, and other blogs are the product of a single idea — a single energy which motivates you to give a clarion call for something, anything, to be done. And after my alma mater, Texas Christian University, broke news that its opening student legislative achievement of Spring 2014 was toilet paper quality, I have that single energy. The issue is not toilet paper, the issue is not a single student government, but the issue is one I must paint with a broad brush when I have too often been meticulous and well-researched.
Middle America — the privileged Middle America in its dominant race and socioeconomic status (wealthy and white) — needs to wake up and listen to the alarm bells calling for greater social responsibility.
My senior year of college I worked long, late nights with a group of talented and passionate students to produce a report for the SGA Commission on Diversity. Read all 26 pages if you will. I have not previously called much attention to the report I helped author because I figured after I left my university the standard of substantive debate about real issues among the student body would continue under promising student leaders. However, when there is no demand for change, then no one can organize and no one can advocate for change. The toilet paper legislation goes right with the ice machine legislation from which we pulled ourselves in 2012-2013. When the leaders go, the members fall off with them.
The Diversity Commission report called attention to serious issues of race and class-based disparities on our college campus. We used research and hard data to prove our conclusions. I assumed that a compelling case would be sufficient to activate the “joiners” on campus who would be willing to start a conversation. However, as the Harvard scholar Robert Putnam argues — America, once the nation of joiners — has sunk into declining interest and active participation in public life. A college campus is no exception, as student body election turnout rates have declined precipitously over the last several decades.
Why did we get this legislation on a major, top-90 national university student government? Why is a university that has a social obligation to be a true academy — we are planning as an Academy of Tomorrow at TCU — not truly be an academy when we cannot translate the values and Reason we learn in the classroom to become part of our daily practice of citizenship? In other words, we learn but do we really do anything about it? Can students search their conscience and say they are truly part of something meaningful? John F. Kennedy made a statement at the close of one of the most socially active decades of American history by asking “ask what you can do for your country.” Does anyone ask themselves that questions any more in seriousness?
The causes of this social stagnation are around us daily. I talked to someone last night at a Bible study who worked in the accounting world but finally gave it up and moved into the nonprofit sector because he was tired of helping people avoid taxes. Why is our concern safeguarding an already secure wealth and an already comfortable lifestyle with ice machines and toilet paper? Why is our concern not weighed in on the institutional racism, war, hunger, disenfranchisement, poor quality education and more out there? We live in an Affluenza Society where social responsibility comes from gestures, and self-service has become a habit. When we want to be more wealthy at the expense of social good, to what end do we want to be wealthy? Is the world a better place because 85 people have collected more wealth than 3.5 billion?
The Affluenza Society is an affront to moral philosophy, religious teachings, political values and plain common sense. When money matters more than justice, or when the enterprise of hardworking people is stashed in overseas bank accounts rather than a reinvestment in the society which brought them there, our society cannot advance. When half of America’s children wake up hungry or in poverty in the morning and their counterparts ten miles away have never been food insecure, society cannot advance. When women are forced to quit work because they are single mothers who cannot balance work and child care, society cannot advance. When America has still not reconciled de facto segregation in its schools, neighborhoods and public debate, society cannot advance. Hasn’t taking care of widows and orphans been a social mandate since Biblical times? It doesn’t matter if you think the government is the problem or the solution. Ronald Reagan could agree on this issue with Jimmy Carter.
The solutions are not about policies for us young adults, not right now anyway. The solutions are about priorities. The solutions are about getting our heads screwed on straight for long enough to understand and hear the groans of a broken society and be the next “Greatest Generation.” The United States today is a social contract held together like a Rube Goldberg machine, and to repair it we need to invent new tools and empower our most promising inventors themselves: American people. Of course this is not a lonely battle I am calling for here, because there are figures across the country calling for change. Yet we are far from the maturation of a new social movement or new Progressive Movement, so we need calls to action.
How do we set priorities? Let Simon Sinek educate you on asking “why” first as a means to set priorities. Our priorities should be justified by our values, not rationalized to our tendency to selfish behavior. Of course we should nurture ourselves, our families and our relationships, but we should not sit as spectators when there is a struggle to be carried in society. We should be in service to the better angels of our nature and serve our society.
Your Takeaway: Commit to meaningful involvement in social justice and social change. Start a socially responsible business, start a fundraising drive, volunteer in a local non-profit, befriend someone different from you, read a book about inequality and reform (I would suggest a lot and welcome suggestions), talk about how your religious faith calls you to mission and service and ask yourself:
Why am I doing what I’m doing?
What is my social responsibility?
Only then can we hang up the toilet paper.
I’ll let Martin Luther King, Jr. close with an excerpt from a famous of his I recalled while visiting Memphis this past weekend and walking through the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel:
But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary’s coat. And I got to drive this car because it’s something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor’s car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don’t know where he’s going to end up if he’s going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.
…
And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, “Now brethren, I can’t give you greatness. And really, I can’t make you first.” This is what Jesus said to James and John. “You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared.” (Amen)
And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That’s a new definition of greatness.
