As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day gets closer on the calendar once again, students are doubtlessly looking forward to the extended amount of sleep they'll get on the holiday.
But this time around, instead of slacking off, why not take the time to step up and make a difference?
Student Voluntary Services is sponsoring volunteer service projects throughout various communities Monday as part of "Make it a Day On, Not a Day Off." This is an opportunity for students to come together with people from various backgrounds and work together to accomplish a project. Even taking the time to clean your cabinets of (non-expired) canned food and donating it to the local soup kitchen, Second Harvest Food Bank, would be a better use of your time than lounging in your pajamas all day, watching reruns of Glee or Law and Order.
And, even if we have made enormous social progress leaps in this country, have we really made progress overall? Or has the hate shifted to a new front?
We need to continue extending acceptance to people with different cultural backgrounds, a cause drawing back to the civil rights movement. Yet, it's becoming increasingly important for people to realize the importance of accepting people's sexual orientation or disabilities.
For instance, saying "That's retarded" or "That's gay" as a synonym for "That's stupid" is not only ignorant, it's hurtful and narrow-minded. As college students, we should have furthered our vocabulary skills by this point in our lives. And if you haven't learned any new words since middle school, it's probably better to not say anything at all.
Gay marriage has been prominent in the news for the last few years as certain states make same-sex marriages or unions legal. It's likely that when we are older, we will look back and realize that same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation. As foolish and hurtful as segregation seems to us now, one day we will look back and see the short-sightedness of not allowing people to marry who they wish.
If Dr. King was alive today, one wonders what he would think of our continued unequal treatment of people just because of their differences.
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