So, being the diligent students that we are (and wanting to satisfy our requirements for O'C), we hoofed it to McIntosh to start our search for the event. No luck. It was not in the Wishing Well, it was not in the Activities Room, it was not in the Ballroom, it was in none of the upstairs conference rooms... So we continued our quest by advancing to a new location: the library. Although the library desk workers were very kind and tried their best to be helpful, it was to no avail. The speaker was not in the library. The desk worker recommended we search the Chapel.
And we did. No luck. The only yield from that dead end was a pamphlet on religious tolerance, which we perused as we continued our quest to Mathile. Again, fruitless. We checked Meyer-- likewise, no. Unable to think of any better strategy, we checked at the Mac desk. Nope, no Ableism speaker scheduled for anyplace that the Mac desk schedules. The worker recommended we check Dicke.
...And we did. Nothing. At this point, it was a half hour after the event supposedly started, so we discontinued our search.
Although I didn't end up attending the Ableism speaker, this experience has made me consider apathy from another angle. Perhaps it's not always that people are apathetic-- perhaps it is simply that the communication is missing.
Example: Most people would likely agree that genocide is more pressing an issue than the fate of dolphins in Japan. However, Japanese cruelty to dolphins somehow gets more press than genocide. Why? I think it is the communication element. Firstly, people can identify with dolphins. They're cute like Flipper and they swim. Okay. They live in a happy little world of ocean and porpoises. Okay. And then a certain Japanese industry comes and kills them. NOT OKAY. People can show images of carved up, dead dolphins. Audiences are appalled. "Not the cute dolphins!"
Now: genocide. One, it's difficult to identify with victims of genocide. We are used to living a life that is removed from violence or serious harm. We have a hard time putting ourselves in the shoes of those who live in constant fear. Secondly, it's more difficult to broadcast images of desecrated human bodies than desecrated dolphin bodies. Dolphin bodies make people angry. Human bodies make people scared. Nightmares are involved.
My conclusion? Apathy for genocide and interest for dolphins are created because of effective communication. Given, it is more *difficult* to communicate the problem of genocide than of dolphin-cide (I don't quite understand why, but it is). Maybe this is an extreme example, and I haven't necessarily worked out all the kinks of this analogy, but I think I'm making a valid point.
It's all communication. If the Ableism speaker had a poor turnout, I'm willing to bet it was because of poor communication. Robert Allen and I would have been there if we had been provided with a date or time.
Also, I think this ties in with my theory of apathy as a defense mechanism. We can't care about everything; our default is to not care until an issue becomes relevant to us. Duh. That makes sense. So the challenge is for advocates to make issues relevant their audience. An advocate's job is to make people care-- to break the apathy. This is done through clear and effective communication. Note the "and effective." Clear communication is one thing; effective communication is something more entirely. You can clearly communicate facts, but until you make those facts relevant to my life, I'm likely to take the bait.
And that's the point of advocacy-- or awareness, I guess. To make something relevant enough that another person becomes interested in it, or another person changes their behavior because of it. If Unite for Awareness week has a low turnout, it is not exclusively the fault of students who are apathetic. It is also in part because the relevancy of these events has not been clearly expressed.
This ties in to Steve's idea that apathy can be a good thing in determing what is and isn't an issue. If a talk about sex has a huge turnout, but a talk about bullying does not, that is probably telling you that college students see sex as a more relevant issue in their lives than bullying. That doesn't necessarily mean that bullying should not be addressed, but it indicates that the issue should definitely be looked at more closely to find the angle that will mean something to its audience.
In sum: apathy is not just the fault of people who don't show up for events. Most people have something the care about-- it just might not be the same issue that you want them to care about. It takes clear and effective communication in order to convince others to take up a particular cross. Crosses are heavy.
Further summation: Windmills and tulips... I feel like I should learn some Dutch. Or at least get a cool Dutch girl hat.
End note: Thanks to a saving phone call from Carol, I discovered that the event was actually at 4:30 p.m. in Mac Activities, so I did get to attend! It wasn't overly dynamic, but it was well presented. Essentially, the presenter, a teacher at Marimor in Lima, showed a video and discussed how to treat those with physical or developmental disabilities. It's mostly common sense-- treat everyone as a competent human being. We watched a ridiculously corny video about disability awareness, which was entertaining. A man from Lima who cannot speak delivered a speech via voice machine. That was pretty cool. A girl with a skin disorder spoke about her problems. As to audience, probably more than a dozen and less than twenty were in attendance. All but four of them, I believe, were physical therapy majors. Due to the poor publicity for the event, I have reason to believe that the point was not to attract a bunch of people, but to cater specifically to pre-physical therapy students, who are likely to encounter developmentally disabled clients in their careers. To that end, it was great-- those attending had pertinent questions and seemed genuinely interested. I don't see this as an example of apathy so much as an example of targeting a specific audience and catering to their concerns-- probably a better strategy, in this case, than generalization.
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