BY COLE WHITE | The Statesman Last week we saw our regular section Crime Beat take a turn for the serious. We went from raccoons and lockouts to much more important issues, including overdoses and suicide attempts. We read what is really going on campus.
Four suicide attempts or threats within one week are unacceptable for any community. We need to look at these occurrences sincerely and wonder what we can do to address them.
This has nothing to do with victim blaming. The onus of this isn’t on them. And this doesn’t fall on the campus either. This is a problem within the student body. We have to say these things are going on. A school cannot fix problems that they don’t know exist.
So what is our problem? We don’t want to talk about it.
Last week every student, staff and faculty member received the Campus Climate survey in a mass email. The survey we all received hosts questions on topics from harassment to sexual assault to racial discrimination. The survey addresses multiple issues that can be looked at to improve all our lives at UMD.
But the most telling feature of our campus climate wasn’t read in the survey itself. It was read in the subject line of the email.
In a perfect world, the subject line would have read something along the lines of “Climate Survey: Let’s make UMD a better place.” But it doesn’t.
What the subject line actually was “Climate Survey: Win Apple iWatch, UMD Parking Pass, or $100 Visa card.”
Yes, bettering our campus is incentivized by the most pointless device Apple has ever designed.
We have a problem here, not only at UMD but also in society in general. Mental health issues, chemical dependency and sexual assault are looked at as outlying problems. We don’t acknowledge that these are prevalent problems in all of our day-to-day lives that affect people we know.
I know some may read this and disagree. I know some will say, “We are always willing to talk about these issues.” That is true for some. We’ve made great strides in vocalizing these issues. But the voices are still the minority.
In 2014 there were 9,120 undergraduate students enrolled at UMD. If over 9,000 students were really concerned, we could do so much better in improving campus life.
Our collective indifference has led us into needing to be bribed to do things that are in our own best interests. We cannot be this apathetic when it comes to facing these problems on campus. The stories in last week's Crime Beat are not rare occasions. We shouldn’t need prizes to improve our lives.
Some may experience harassment and discrimination and simply brush it off. But others may not. Telling your story may help another person who doesn’t feel like they can.
We cannot read that police blotter and look at it as faceless numbers. We can’t look at those people and see them as far-away problems. These are real people on our own campus. These are people we may see in the hallways and classrooms on a daily basis.
In the end we’re all in this together and we all have to take care of one another. To do that, we all have to talk.
To those who want to want to be involved: compassion may be difficult at times but it doesn’t weigh nearly as heavy as guilt.