This week, I am personally issuing a challenge to you, the reader. It is about time you got off your butt and made a contribution to the general public.

You’ve made contributions to your Greek organization, your favorite religious group and your other assorted extracurriculars, and there is even a slight chance that you have put forth some effort in the classroom. It is just as likely that you have made your contributions to the sorority fashion stereotype, to the SMU drinking legacy or to popped collars everywhere.

If some of these apply to you – and even if they do not – your next duty to this campus is to let your thoughts be heard. The college campus is often referred to as a “marketplace for ideas.” Campus life is unique in that it brings together people with little or nothing in common and forces them to confront ideas different from their own.

A campus marked by discussion only in the classroom is a wasted campus. After all, classroom discussion has its limits. Discussion, whether we like it or not, is tailored toward everyone’s ultimate goal, an A.

People will say things they do not mean and do things they would never do elsewhere – all to receive that golden A. The true discussion occurs outside the classroom – in the hallways, open spaces and common areas. It occurs in print, online and with the spoken word.

Walk into any common area and you will hear that the spoken word is alive and well at SMU. Walk into Java City and you will see that online activity is alive and well at SMU. Pick up a copy of The Daily Campus on any given day, turn to the Opinion page and gaze at the beautiful filler that it displays. Print discussion is not alive and well at SMU.

An uninformed newcomer who looked at our newspaper on an average day would believe that SMU is populated by middle-age men and women with receding hairlines and wrinkles.

No, the people whose pictures appear on our Opinion page regularly are not SMU students. They are professional columnists. The Daily Campus resorts to pulling stories from a paid service when students do not provide enough new content to fill a single, solitary Opinion page. I do not blame them at all. What else can they do?

Students who choose not to exercise their right to be heard are letting others decide what is best for them. After all, your ideas do not matter if no one knows about them.

Let them be heard! Write a column or a letter to the editor. We’ll all be better for it, because we will have contemplated our own values in the context of yours.

And, maybe public discourse will make us more aware of our rights, so that we can defend them whenever they are attacked.

Consider this quote from Voltaire:

“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

In the end, those most apt to lose their freedom will be those who are most afraid to exercise it. In a few years, all of us will be in the real world, dealing with mortgages, families and jobs. We will be paying taxes and following regulations approved decades and even centuries ago.

The rights and powers written into the Constitution in 1787, with a few exceptions, have survived to the present day. In this context, it is difficult to argue that laws made in the next few years will have no affect on your life.

The only way to change those laws is to change the minds of voters in order to elect representatives who will promote policies that are consistent with your values.

On a campus with 11,000 total students, I cannot believe that students have this much apathy. Do students at SMU really not care about what goes on around them?

Professor Henson writes articles periodically. So does Katy Rowe. I write a column every week. But we are few and far between. We can only do so much.

The Opinion page is completely wasted if it is not filled with student content on a regular basis. If everyone on campus wrote an article just once during their time here, The Daily Campus would have to start an afternoon edition to keep up with demand.

So, take an hour out of your busy schedule and contribute to the cause of idea exchange. It is a cause we can all support.

Reed Hanson is a junior electrical engineering major. He may be contacted at [email protected].