Common reading lacking common goal

By Jason Siegel     9/25/08 7:00pm

Dear Common Reading, this is for you. I think you should ponder this candid review. You're hogwash, you're toothless, you're gonna be great. I believe in you truly, but first I berate. A text is a means, not an end to pursue. An author's deficient with one point of view. To your book-centric past please now say adieu for a transfiguration I here beg of you.Oh Common Reading, I must beat you blue but I'll do it with love; I'll do it for you. Your name, to be frank, is an earful of sigh. No import, no fanfare, no reason to fly. This gift with a spine is just one I don't want. It's pressure; it's hazing; a high school haunt. This shared ID is a humorous plea. I'm Hanszen! I'm MechE! I'm Three Cups of Tea! This dialogue's missing a who, where and how. Professor Plum in the library by the candlestick now? Your issues are passive, enslaved by a book. What's cheaper? What's easy? Where shouldn't we look? You're present at orientation each year. Those freshmen, those suckers! Upperclassmen drink beer. And most sorry yet, you're still thinking small. We're Rice and we're hedged, but we can be tall. You salute our new presence by having us read or sit in a theater to hear of a need. But what of our talents, our minds and our hearts? We're not just some sponges; we've got moving parts!

How 'bout motive and fervor, a year to muse and a name for the headlines, a name for the news? How 'bout movies to watch, a speech to peruse, books (yes, that's plural!), whatever we choose? How 'bout action in numbers, a movement by us? How 'bout journals and papers as forums for fuss? How 'bout courses and theses and projects galore in theme with the subject that's set at the fore?

Give us voices, not welcomes, and loudly we'll call; give us people who listen, together we'll squall; give us events so large that as armies we'll brawl; give us meat for consumption, to interest, enthrall. Give us reason for ruckus, not discussion in lieu; give us cause to create a big hullabaloo. A reading, you see, is a sob and a snore. Give us something to fight, give us something much more.

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Try energy, healthcare or freedoms abroad; try happiness, weed or political fraud; try telecom, Darfur or sex ed that's flawed; try warfare, religion, a claim we should laud. It's issues and causes that spawn unity, not sitting in circles with Three Cups of Tea. Let Rice summon change; let students be free. Together we're something, now don't you agree?

Want vision? Want thunder? Want influence? Speed? Want the public's attention to a critical need? Want the weight of a hippo, the strength of a steed? Then do us a favor; don't have us just read. Oh Common Reading, I rhyme to you here in hopes that you'll open a listening ear. Ahead is our future, a frightening frontier. Let's go make a difference; let's go pioneer.

Dear Common Reading, this is your cue. And Dean Robert Forman, for you I write too. Have the strength of an owl smothered in blue. To let us take flight, you know what to do.

Jason Siegel is a Martel College senior.

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