How We Act and Our Responsibilities
by Jon Lim
Editor-in-Chief
"Everyone who goes to Burroughs at some point gets depressed."
-Mikey Goralnik
I remember reading Mikey's senior rant three years ago. I think out of all the senior rants that I have read, this one passage has stuck with me. There is something poignant and even seductive about having very tragic lives. While this overarching generalization just is not true -- not everyone gets depressed at Burroughs- I think it is telling about our Burroughs community. I have strongly believed that all the burnt out and exhausted seniors tired from the grueling six years at Burroughs would be burnt out and exhausted at any other school having piled their workload in the same way at that school. The obsessive worker at Burroughs will be the crazy and self-motivated worker at say... MICDS. Another friend of mine argues that there is a distinctive culture that Burroughs has with this huge collection of highly-motivated and intensely-driven students. After some thought, I have come to agree. I think that the competitive atmosphere pushes us to compare ourselves to each other. We begin to have an emphasis on what we are not good at, what abilities we lack, how are we inadequate. I think it is also a mistake to expect to go through six years of your life without something really sad happening just as it is a mistake to expect to go through six years of your life without something really happy. Certainly, the class of 2008 has had something tragic happen to the class as a whole nearly every year we have been at Burroughs. Solution? Is there really a problem besides the fact that we're just teenagers? As E.B. Little class of '99 said when she came back to visit, the one unfortunate coincidence of our Burroughs experience is that we are teenagers through the six years. Perhaps, as in the immortal words of the Caterpillar to Alice in Lewis Carroll's novel, "Keep your temper." Or listen to Bobby McFerrin: "Don't worry, be happy."
"Proportionality should be a guideline in war."
-former United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
While school and school work are far from being any sort of war, it might be useful to apply this principle of McNamara metaphorically. Burroughs students absolutely must find a very fragile balance: the time and effort spent on work that is necessary, work (activities) not considered work, self-improvement, mental health, rest, and fun. The night is a time of battle between you and all the things set in front of you. Prioritization, balance, proportionality is key to not being crushed but the every threatening weight of all that is being a Burroughs student.
"Am I my brother's keeper?"
-Genesis 4:9
The answer to this rhetorical question is completely and unequivocally "YES"; yet, we fail to translate this idea into our lives and political choices. Let us take a look at the facts. According to the Organization for Cooperation and Development, 15-year olds perform below average in using math in real life situations compared to the students in other nations. The US is only ninth in the percent of students with at least a high school degree according to the same study. According to the United Nations Human Development Report, the United States ranks only 12th in terms of several indexes including education, poverty, health, etc. Nationally, we face a widening gap between the upper class and lower class that has not been as divided as since the Great Depression. And we also face a simply absurd national debt.
For most of the past thirty years, we as a nation have rolled back programs aiming to promote equality; moreover, the public does not pay for the policies and wars that this nation does commit to. Every time we come to vote we are in many ways given a choice: pay for taxes and continue government programs or reduce taxes and then reduce government programs. In our humanly selfish ways, the constituents continue to vote for presidents who promise to reduce taxes rather than continue the important government programs begun by the New Deal and Great Society. The great irony is that Presidents like Reagan and Bush have lowered taxes while still pursuing policies which have driven the nation into a national debt in the trillions. Simultaneously, we have pulled back welfare, held off from healthcare, and sucked out money from education while still accruing a ridiculous deficit because of our own selfish "ME!" "MY MONEY!" approach to voting.
In the coming years, this nation is going to pay for its debt one way or another. Our debts are many: the under-funded education system, the growing impoverished, China and India who have lent us so much, the elderly, the sick. We have a responsibility, which will one day be fulfilled whether we are willing or not.
The images and sounds and things of the past that have marked me the most and given me such hope for the future amidst such problems are those of the masses of students protesting in sit-ins, students standing up and singing the national anthem in protest in the HUAC court hearings, the students marching singing "we shall overcome" for the free speech movement in Berkeley, the members of early SNCC and SLATE, the civil rights movement and anti-war movements. We students are the future of the nation. As much as older generations might try to stifle our ability to make our opinions especially those contrary to their own, it is still our right and our destiny to replace whatever system is in place. In my US History Since 1945 senior history course, we've looked at all the different movements. In the early 60s, there was so much activism and participation in our democratic way of life. Students really believed in our American system and government, that we could change things for the better!