Welcome to Rocky Top, New Vols! And welcome back, returning Vols! I am so excited to begin this year with you and lead the one thing you can count on each week: The Daily Beacon.
If you’re unfamiliar with our publication, I hope you’ll take the time each Wednesday to read through our physical print edition and learn more about what’s happening around good old UT. And if you haven’t already, you can drop us a follow on Instagram @utkdailybeacon, where we share breaking news, fun feature stories and updates on UT athletics. Staying in touch with your campus and your new (or old, familiar) hometown can only serve to guard against a danger I find increasingly present: college student apathy.
In high school, we experience the unshakable certainty that everyone is looking at us, all the time. We walk hallways in a sweat of self-consciousness, afraid to do anything wrong or say something that might deserve a sideways glance. I arrived to the University of Tennessee in 2023 expecting this feeling of panic to continue.
Vols, I have found the opposite to be true, and it concerns me.
You will see it begin to infiltrate our beautiful campus very soon. Within a couple months, the newness of sorority life will begin to wear off, the feverish Volunteer spirit will go down ever so slightly and as class workloads grow and demand more of your time, you’ll be presented with the quiet, polarizing temptation to not care.
Apathy has descended on our generation — at least, in real life. Online, where it’s easy to be passionate about your politics and beliefs while hiding behind a fake username (or your real one), is not what I’m talking about here. No, Gen Z needs to face our very real problem: We are afraid to care about what’s happening around us.
Many times I find myself surrounded by other students who seem entirely preoccupied with themselves, their phones or their friends. It’s a strange phenomenon: trundling down Ped Walkway, hands in pockets, ears tucked behind a set of headphones and realizing that no one is paying attention to you at all.
Dear reader, I urge you: Do not allow yourself to fall into this pit of apathetic monotony. Why? Because caring — out loud, deeply, with fervor — is what brings about change in this world. The online front will only go so far. It’s up to you whether you will have the character to spring from the pit and rise to the challenge of actually concerning yourself with other people, their lives and their needs.
By keeping up with news sources like the Beacon, I hope you can stay informed of the changes, both good and bad, that UT and Knoxville will undergo in the upcoming year. Our world faces a steady current of breaking news headlines, listing out destruction after devastation. It needs young people like you to care enough to say something out loud, to care enough to pay attention to those around you and to care enough to break free from the digital world and really, truly take action. After all, that’s what a Volunteer would do, right?
Vol Means All. Welcome home!
