When shit hits the fan, I duck.

We've all heard some version of what happened when S. B. Dissanayake decided he was going to come back to the place he spent his undergraduate days. Most say the students neatly organized themselves (as they are very used to doing) in an orderly fashion and happily hooted the Minister of Higher Education off the premises. Some more inclined to dramatic moments say they even threw stones, in an organized fashion. Some say the minister was "taken hostage". Either way, we all know the University Students' Union is currently very unhappy (as they are used to being) about the consequences of what happened that day.

Last Thursday, us 3^rd years from the English Department coolly walked into Dr. Wickramagamage's lecture on Jane Austen's Emma, oblivious (by choice) to what was going on around us. The Peradeniya Student's Union had declared a token strike and organized a protest rally in Colombo, followed by demonstrations in Kandy over the next few days. The seven of us (and a number of others) still went to class.

Who went to class? Those who call themselves 'anti-rag', or more diplomatically, 'non-rag'.

Why did they go to class? Some say "protests don't work", others, that it's "political". If protests don't work then what does? Do we, who stay away from the protests, have better ideas about how to deal with these situations? If taking part is political, is not taking part not political? Are we naive enough to think we can be neutral? Where does all the cultural theory we learn in class go? What happened to you political activists and rebels fighting against the "frustration" of our generation that has nothing to "fight for"? Where were you that day?

Hiding.

Hiding behind flesh and bone, conformity and the fear of the unknown.

I didn't take part because I just didn't give a shit beyond an indignant comment while passing the TV. Half of you didn't, simply because you're anti-rag, or more diplomatically, 'non-rag', and therefore anti-student-union. Tell me it just didn't bother you; it just didn't bother you because you're anti-rag.

Yes, I differentiate myself from those who call themselves 'anti-rag', or more diplomatically, 'non-rag'. But I am no different: I was not part of the protest; I was not even part of the token strike. I was part of the distinctly 'anti-rag', or more diplomatically, 'non-rag' group of students attending class that day. It never struck me that if I was to be considered a thinking individual, I must needs have known why I was in class that day.

Why was I in class that day? I didn't know. I had not thought about it.

So I thought about it.

Now that I have thought about it, I still don't know where I stand. But I have thought about it, and that makes me that much better than all of you who have not.

Have you thought about it? Thought about it for yourself, as an individual not belonging to a group? Have you thought about it as someone concerned, someone affected, someone in the direct line of assault? However else you'd like to put it, we have this much in common with the accused: we are students of the Sri Lankan University system.

Take a stand; take some responsibility. Decide. If you're going to be undecided, be decidedly undecided.

Taking God Everywhere

By the time most of us get to university, we've been completely brainwashed. First our parents, then our teachers and to some extent our friends play such a huge role in determining what we believe that by the time we're undergraduates we don't know how to differentiate our own thoughts from those of others around us. So university, they say, is going to undo all this "teaching" and train us how to "think". Once we leave with a rolled up piece of paper that gives us yet another label (that of "educated degree-holder"), we're supposed to be the sole owners of our own minds. Sounds good so far.

But what really happens? As a student of the humanities, all I can say is that what you see is not what you get. Typically, or ideally, a university will teach you the accepted norms, and then teach you to question it. So we learn about racism and political anarchy, language and hedgemony, sexism and contradictory ideologies; we also learn about the body and the mind, truth and falsehood, God and man. Then we are told: there is no right and wrong, you make your own 'Soup a la Life' and try to impress us. So we undergraduates who were so comfortable being brainwashed are suddenly forced to make choices we don't know whether we even want to make. The freedom is ours, but the whole thing is really a trap.

Now I see you raising your eyebrows. University is a period of freedom where the mind-shackles are removed, where you become adults, and you let your soul become what you want it to be. But think about this:

1. How many of us feel comfortable holding on to the traditional belief that there are fundamental differences between men and women?
2. How many of us feel comfortable saying that "I believe my mother knows best for me"?
3. How many of us feel comfortable saying that the universe was created in seven days by an all-powerful God, and then admitting that we don't really know how exactly?
4. How many of us are comfortable saying that at the end of the day there are fundamental truths, and there is one ultimate Truth?

I don't think there are many of us in these groups. Even if there are, there are even less of us that are comfortable holding and asserting these opinions in the classroom where the mantra is feminism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, agnosticism, sexual liberalism, relativism and every other "ism" anybody ever came up with. True we have the freedom to choose what we want; but we are also subtly told what we should want.

Colossians 1:19-20 tells us that "it pleaseth the Father...by him to reconcile all things to himself"; does this not mean that these issues we face in the classroom can be reconciled to God? Then if through Christ all things are reconciled to God, do we see the truth of this statement in our classrooms at university? If we don't, then what are we doing about it? What are we doing to gain the necessary knowledge and Biblical understanding that allows us to reconcile these apparently irreconcilable issues of "modern education"? Do we even care?

As Christian Students struggling to hold our ground on a firm faith in God and Christian precepts, in a world that is constantly changing, life is full of contradictions. But we need to start facing these contradictions and figuring them out for ourselves, just like we do with everything else that we come across in our studies. We need to stop separating the classroom text from the Bible and the Bible from the rest of our lives. We need to start incorporating Christian values into what we discuss in classrooms, what we write in our essays and what we say in our exam answers. We need to start being Christians every where we are.