It’s my third semester at Syracuse University, and every day I learn about one more “racial attack” or “problematic diction” fermented in the culture of apathy on SU’s campus.

Apathy is a thing of nurture, not nature. People are naturally communal, living through each other and in relation to one another. Communities are inherently empathetic, which is a result of multilayered components including decentering oneself and caring for everyone else’s well-being and success. Community is the “goal” — following academics — for everything done on this campus. 

Many students join frats and sororities to “belong,” but what seems to be lost in translation and daily application is that community isn’t meant or built to be harmful. Community isn’t built to damage, or at least that’s the reclaimed meaning of community. Community does not wound its members or other folks participating within or in proximity to it, especially if the community in mention is a part of a larger one, such as the collective student body.

On the other side of the spectrum there is apathy. Apathy is inherently capitalistic. Depriving us of communal relationships by centering ourselves materially and — by extension and time — spiritually, emotionally and humanly. SU, whether intentionally or not, teaches and perpetuates a culture of apathy and self-serving attitudes. And at a university with a problematic reputation, attributed to various events of clear-cut systemic patterns, apathy seems quite normal. We observe it, some of us first hand, through the university’s lacking response to the #NotAgainSU movement. The parallels of vague answers and the oversaturated “We’re doing the best we can” responses seep their way through all of the university’s quite useless statements.

Apathy is practiced through disowning accountability. As we see the amplitude of dismissed actions committed and bolstered by SU’s fraternities and sororities, athletic teams, faculty and the Department of Public Safety and how these organizations are typically forgiven, labeled and secreted in a “don’t even mention it” cylindrical, closeted cabinet. Accountability through solidified action is the first step of teaching and institutionalizing empathy.

On this campus, when you’re a first generation, low income student owning a candle in your South Campus apartment, accountability is robust, but when you’re an athlete who sexually assaults someone, accountability is enfeebled. Selective accountability is more than corporeal at SU.

Institutional apathy is the becoming term for this pattern — an underground culture of separating students from each other. This self-centered manual outlines the derisive conviction towards sexual assault and rape survivors as well as anyone vocalizing their unattended pain as a direct assimilation into or in connection to this campus. It is hidden by the university — yet not so well — and allegorically footnoted in our courses’ syllabi but in fonts as large as the accustomed enthusiasm towards Greek life. But it is passed around campus through mundane, not-so-reactionary wishes to people’s courage and emotional labor in deciding to come forward and addressing the uncountable problems on this campus. 

This striking quandary between vague answers and unhelpful statements whenever someone decides to directly discuss an issue on campus is too loud of an example to be missed. It’s an infamous, institutional formula to “respond” but not really give a substantial answer whenever someone or something is called-out, also known as performative care. This exasperates my spirit.

When trying to exist within apathetic systems — whether it’s by living on campus, participating in clubs and activities, attending classes or attempting to humanely exist in a multifaceted manner — it becomes almost impossible to achieve a flourishing lifestyle while authentically living and expanding our maximum limits.

Self-centered accountability is a defined term solely when you have accumulated privilege. Privilege gives you the space to specifically care about issues that impact you directly without paying any mind to those around you and what issues impact them but not necessarily yourself. When your fight and search for accountability is only in action when it’s in correlation to something that impacts you, then it is self-centered, selective, and performative.

This phenomena shows when students on this campus don’t mobilize for and support the sexual assault and rape survivors on this campus despite frat parties’ existence as hosts of rape culture and unasked consent. Fraternity brothers are 300% more likely to rape, and one in five women are sexually assaulted on college campuses, according to the Guardian. Although the piece was written in 2014, Greek life is still a national illustration of what privilege, institutional apathy and collective selfishness have come to be.

We saw an example of institutional apathy first hand when some students vocalized their unsolicited outrage about some frat parties shutting down. These students chose to employ their anger on Yik Yak by bullying survivors and those in need of support into silence and subordination instead of offering support and accountability. To cannily put emotional labor, time and energy into fighting survivors because of a shut down frat party is not beneficial in any capacity. Instead, these students should redirect this rage into protesting, supporting and unambiguously shifting and recreating the culture at SU. 

Nonetheless, spam commenting on Yik Yak to find out who specifically caused a party to shut down— read that once again for your convention, some students are concerned about a party when students are being sexually assaulted on campus —  is far from productive for the campus collective. Allyship, whether to sexual assault survivors, marganilized folks or anyone else in need of communal mobilization is almost nonexistent on this campus due to the way in which we, students, place our intentions and time. That imbalanced distribution of how we care and what we care about — and if we care about others at all — is an emphatic example of how apathy is nurtured systemically and, by extension, individually.

A piece on Yik Yak, written by Karla Perez for The Daily Orange, states “Although it is great that Yik Yak was used for good at SU, not all posts have to be so meaningful,” referring to students using the platform as a forward thinking process to amplify survivors’ voices as well as their wants and needs. The previous statement flaunts how privilege plays a role in how we view everything in this world, especially on this campus, including how an app like Yik Yak is best used. Such statement consolidates my point on apathy and privilege and where our priorities as a campus “community” are positioned in proximity to what issue: a shut down frat party or a sexual assault survivors protest? 

As an even more invigorating statement, Chancellor Kent Syverud’s take on what the “real” problem is behind the skyrocketing statistics of sexual assault and rape incidents on this campus missed the point. Syverud spews nonsense at us with the legality of the support process for survivors of sexual assault and rape: he said it requires a report before any investigation can take place, implying that the problem is survivors not reporting the incidents. Syverud instead should turn around and take a look at the unhelpful and apathetic process “offered” to survivors. 

 Patterns are created and marinated through academic and institutional apathy then carried forward by privileged students on this campus. However, these students are only here for a short time: eventually they will leave SU’s gated campus. So what type of humans are we really molding and creating in such an environment, where some folks are absolved of accountability due to campus-based status, and those mobilizing, electrifying the systems and shocking its roots are figuratively redacted from the books and the university’s headlines?

This apathy is encircling the anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, and anti-Asian fluent mentality on campus, which also includes anyone subsisting outside of this institution’s gender and sexual binaries. Apathy is taught. Apathy is practiced. Apathy is capitalistic. Apathy is the sphere at which our humanity ends and resets. Apathy is the silhouette of many cavernous problems well alive on campus.

Zainab Altuma (Almatwari) is a sophomore in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Their column appears biweekly. They can be reached at zhalmatw@syr.edu.

Published on October 19, 2021 at 11:05 pm