Collegiate Times

Recently I’ve been thinking about several topics worthy of examination — the need to build collaborative partnerships among many segments of our community, the critical need to focus on public policy and the gradual shift in culture that seems to be happening at Virginia Tech — a shift away from insularity and toward integration.

Today, my purpose is to probe our university’s motto and what it means by focusing on the first two topics mentioned above. I’ll begin with the second topic — the critical need to focus on issues related to public policy.

This need seems even more relevant when reading recent editions of the Roanoke Times, which have featured two of the issues members of our community will be addressing in the coming two weeks: the increase in poverty and joblessness in the US and the less-than-effective attempts to help Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake in January.

By mentioning them, my first goal is to raise awareness. Without a raised level of awareness, these issues will remain below most members of the community’s radar. They will not be seen, which means they will continue to go unremarked upon and, more importantly, un-acted upon.

In the next two weeks, many major events will occur on campus, but at least two relate to these two issues: Sustainability Week, which runs from Nov. 18 to Nov. 25, and the three-day event called “Local Food, Global Hunger: Learning, Sharing, Serving,” which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.

Each of these events addresses these issues and offers both opportunities to learn about them from a number of critical perspectives, and, at the end, an opportunity on Oct. 2 to actually take action.

Both the learning and the doing are important. Both are part of the educational process and both are essential components to a fuller understanding of “Ut Prosim.”

The activities during Sustainability Week — which is a true example of teamwork between Tech, the local community and the town — and those later in the month offer practical, hands-on ways to get involved.

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A version of this article appeared in the Sep 16 issue of the Collegiate Times.