If deserted dorms and an eerily quiet State Street are any indication, many students left Madison for Spring Break last week, off to the land of parents and sleep.
For many students, the return to Madison is a return to reality, a somewhat grimmer picture in which scandal-plagued Annette Ziegler won the open seat on the State Supreme Court and a school in North Carolina suspended a student for dressing like a pirate per his ""Pastafarian"" beliefs. Corruption: 1, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: 0. These are definitely dark times.
Looking around, the world can be a scary place even without bans on pirate attire. People are killing each other in Iraq and Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees are in need of serious assistance, and President Bush just appointed a man who is openly anti-regulation to be his top regulatory official. Goodbye, clean air. We'll be missing you soon.
The temptation is to feel overwhelmed. After all, in a presidential primary race where leading candidates are raising money by the tens of millions of dollars, there doesn't seem to be all that much that a regular college kid can do. Withhold your vote? Decide not to contribute those five dollars after all? I'm sure Hilary Clinton will weep over that one.
Maybe it's time to start looking closer to home for ways to have an impact. It's a short drive to Chicago, and an even shorter one to the rougher parts of Milwaukee.
Spend a few minutes in schools where students have parents in prison and where Child Protective Services is practically on speed dial, and you will have an idea of just how badly help is needed.
Start asking why teachers are being told to test their students on fractions when the kids are still struggling with what comes after 99 because there's no one around after school to help them with homework or keep them on track, and you will understand just how tightly proponents of the No Child Left Behind act are plugging their ears.
Madison itself has its fair share of people in need. Schools need tutors and general classroom help, homeless shelters need volunteers, and the City Council needs to be kept aware of the need for affordable housing.
Not everyone has it in them to join the Peace Corps for the requisite 27 months, and even traveling to places like New Orleans is too daunting a task for many students. That doesn't mean students have no place in efforts to solve the world's problems; in fact, most large changes and revolutions throughout history have come about because of young people.
But sweeping social and political change rarely comes overnight, and people tend to get so caught up in the big picture that they forget just how much of a difference they can make on a local level. In a country and a world dominated by whoever has the most money, grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org are demonstrating the huge effect ordinary citizens can have when they decide it's time to change things.
So try it out sometime. Volunteer at an after-school program or help out at a food shelf. Put real pressure on local politicians to get them in gear to find the funds that social services are lacking. Work to solve problems on a local level, and the wider ones will seem less daunting.
Besides, if all other changes fail, you can always try dressing like a pirate. Except in North Carolina.
