At the end of each school year, Mirror editorial boards have traditionally raised concerns about lost student traditions or condemned the administration for something it failed to do. Yet, complaints and constant woes of apathy and myopic thinking have been challenged with a strong year of student activism.
This past weekend, 350 students walked in the annual Relay for Life, an event that raised more than $30,000 for the American Cancer Society and supported Fairfield’s student group Colleges Against Cancer. Last week, students helped Public Safety make over $21,000 in its Jail ‘N’ Bail for the Special Olympics.
Nine female students turned their women’s studies capstone into a micro-lending project called Sustainable Equity for Women (SEW) in which the funds the group raised is invested into business ventures by women in developing nations.
Further, the Students for Social Justice have made themselves a prominent activist group on campus with their much-talked about Homeless Village and the eye-opening Hunger Banquet, which exposed participants to the social disparities in the U.S. and abroad.
Surrounding the fifth anniversary of the United State’s entrance in the Iraq War, Fairfield Theater’s ‘A Cry for Peace,’ and the Hope Trail by Fairfield for Peace NOW’s were both vivid displays of visual activism denoting the numbers of civilian and military deaths due to the Iraq War, and called for students to take notice to the war. This has been the first major anti-war demonstration on campus since the beginning of the war.
Groups such as the Student Environmental Association, the Vagina Warriors and Campus Ministry service trips have reaffirmed the strong sense of self and community that is not only at the core of our Jesuit institution but is becoming a growing obligation of our generation.
Even the Fairfield administration has been pushing student activism through service learning. At first, some students may have been skeptical of the service learning components of their courses.
However, as the semester comes to a close, it is encouraging to see that students have expanded the ideas discussed in the classroom in order to establish long-term projects that promote direct action.
While these groups only provide a snapshot of the ambitions of Fairfield students, students should be applauded for their participation and initiatives that have the capacity to evoke change and awareness among a vast group of individuals.
We challenge and encourage the student body to continue in these endeavors, which will only reinforce the social and political importance of the student voice.
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