The attention deficit

It was an astonishing disappearing act. You wouldn’t know it given the recent media hysteria over such “pressing” issues as the prospective Trump presidential candidacy, but one year ago yesterday, an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers and unleashed a flood of over two hundred million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill, possibly the worst natural disaster in American history, painted the water black, coating shellfish, birds and marine mammals in insoluble dark sludge. At the time, some of the more dire projections of the oil flow suggested that the spill might spread all the way up the east coast.

Today it’s all gone. Not the oil, of course — no, the oil spill is gone from the public consciousness. Did it all fall to the sea floor? Will the oil continue to wash up on the shores of the Gulf for generations? Should we be concerned about the seafood we eat? These questions’ importance does not wane when the media dangle shiny objects like Charlie Sheen before the public eye, but no one seems to care too much about asking them, even on the anniversary of the disaster.

Our polity’s collective attention span in dealing with major issues of public concern seems to have gotten shorter in recent years. In the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the nation truly was fixated on the global conflict with radical Islam that led to two wars and thousands of American deaths. It took about eight years and a major financial crisis for us to lose focus on our military’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we’re much more efficient; we forget about wars like the one launched in Libya within the span of a month.

An outsider might expect this campus to be immune to the national tendency to forget or ignore the pressing issues shaping the trajectory of our civilization. How sad it is, then, that the Orange Bubble is instead a place where this instinct is amplified. While it may vary depending on the company one keeps, I’ve found that dinner conversation here is far more likely to revolve around the strange weather of this Princeton spring than global game-changers like the ongoing Arab spring.

There are extracurricular organizations on campus devoted to discussion of public affairs. But all too often, these groups — Whig-Clio and its subsidiaries like the International Relations Council, political groups like the College Republicans and Democrats, student publications, and niche activist organizations — overlap, drawing on the same base of politically active students. While there might be dialogue about these issues within this subset of the campus population, rarely is there much of an attempt to spark a broader, campus-wide conversation.

It’s not entirely the fault of these student groups. Practically speaking, there’s no effective way for them to encourage more widespread civic engagement. People aren’t often willing to spare the time to listen to appeals by organizations tabling in Frist Campus Center, and other kinds of demonstrations like petitions, USG referenda and protests are prone to coming across as over the top. Given our isolation on this campus from the rest of the world, it’s much easier for us to embrace our overextension and simply avoid dealing with issues external to our campus — to go that day without reading The New York Times, to skip that public lecture about the Arab revolutions and catch a mid-afternoon nap after spending a late night on a problem set.

When we do have time to focus on the news, we seem to have a preference for the parochial. But even when we pay attention to events occurring on campus, our priorities often seem misplaced. Princeton students shift attention from one gossipy, flavor-of-the-week piece of campus news to the next with little regard for its actual significance. Last week, a ‘Prince’ story on a fairly unimportant USG election controversy for the Class of 2012 garnered over 65 comments on the ‘Prince’ website over the course of a week. But who is still talking about the Borough’s recent policy change regarding alcohol-related calls made from the Street? Why are students more likely to get up in arms about Yaro’s management of elections than over policies that may actually result in student deaths?

If one of the finest educational institutions in the world — one dedicated to the pursuit of learning in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations — can’t cut through its students’ own apathy, then the broader societal trend shouldn’t surprise us too much. But the tar balls are still washing up on the shores of the Gulf Coast, even if no one is paying attention.