OK, kids, I need your help. It’s really pretty simple — just tell me what in (insert deity of your choice here)’s name you want to read in this section. Or hell, even in this paper. I’d be more than happy to pass along your demands to some of the other upstanding members of the Binghamton University society (ha!) that toil underground with me in our dungeon of an office.

Now, I’m not the kind of girl to beg, but seriously — I need someone to drop me a hint about what I can do to wake you all from your alcoholic stupors and elicit some sort of reaction. ANY sort of reaction.

Sure, I always thought it was annoying when I had to step over a few protesters and shield my face from the imposing bulk of their bullhorns as they questioned my very right to refer to myself as a member of the female sex (or the human race, depending on which protest you want to recall). But even the tree-hugging crazies spilling ketchup all over themselves in a disillusioned attempt to make people hate the president are preferable to the typical mass of skin and bones swathed in a BU sweatshirt that you have to poke with a stick to ensure that it is, indeed, still living.

So tell me what I can do to try to tempt you Bearcats out there into being a little less apathetic. (And, while we’re at it, a little less pathetic … there’s a reason those two words are practically the same.)

Less than 100 students voted in the student government elections last Wednesday, which really isn’t surprising, considering there weren’t enough candidates in some of the races to even merit holding an election. (That’s right, flower children, it was a big waste of paper, so run outside and chain yourselves to a tree to show the rest of us how it’s done.)

Student government too boring? OK, I’ll agree, sitting in on their meetings wouldn’t be my Monday night activity of choice either, but the SA is worth keeping tabs on when you consider that they control a $1 million to $2 million budget of OUR money. Ten years ago, around 800 students took part in a multi-day protest because they weren’t allowed to sit in on an SA meeting. What it comes down to? They gave a shit, and we don’t. (Not to mention the rather disconcerting idea that a lack of interest in how the SA spends our money now will soon turn into a lack of interest in how Congress spends our taxes in 10 years.)

Honestly, I’d drop dead of shock if even half the students here could tell me the name of this University’s president, or which departments of the school receive the most funding or, hell, even how much you (or mommy and daddy) pay in tuition every year. Obviously asking you how that tuition money is used would only yield blank stares, so I won’t even bother. Don’t hurt yourselves thinking too much.

We’re all pathetic. The majority of students at this University (yes, that means you) can’t even muster the energy to throw away their empty beer cans, much less begin caring about things that can’t be found on State Street.

This University is covered by a layer of apathy so thick a dung beetle couldn’t burrow its way out. So wake up. I’m holding out a shovel and I’m offering to help you dig — take the damn shovel and prove our generation is more than just a waste of space.