A Family Affair

In the food court yesterday I overheard a student complaining about her class having to go a campus talk on domestic violence.

"Why do I have to listen to this?" she asked a friend.  "I know it's a problem, but it's depressing."

She's right, of course.  Relationship violence isn't a cheerful subject.  Nor is sex trafficking, genocide, racism, bullying, or anything else involving the exploitation (or worse) of human beings, either individually or collectively.

But because these actions are so terrible--and because they happen so often--we have an obligation to pay attention to them.  For they involve members of the human family, which we're all a part of.

Don't mean to sound sappy or sentimenal here, but in fact, we are all connected.  And we're also responsible for each other, more than we might want to admit.  I'm hardly the first (and hopefully not the last) to think this, but in a world that sometimes seems to be "majoring" in self-absorption, it's important to be reminded that others in our midst matter.

This isn't necessarily a call to action but rather to awareness: of human rights violations, whatever form they take, wherever they occur. There's no shortage of them on this planet in 2014, some taking place on the other side of the world, others on the other side of town.  We may not be able to solve all of these problems overnight, but knowledge is a good first step.

Which is why all of us (including the complaining student in the food court) need to take ourselves to programs that raise awareness.

Like tomorrow's Women's Resource Center symposium on sex trafficking (Nov. 19, 9:30 a.m.-3:15 p.m., College Center). 

Or next Monday's program on the medical atrocities of the Holocaust (Nov. 24, 10 am, College Center).

Or the talk on American sports culture and domestic violence (Dec. 3, 12:30 p.m., College Center).

Or next spring's workshops on bullying and sexual harassment (check back for the time and place). 

These aren't exactly happy subjects, but they're important for all of us to know about and understand.  For whether we realize it or not, they touch members of the human family--people just like us.