I’m thinking of creating a new t-shirt to compete with “Ithaca is Gorges.” It would read something like “Ithaca is the middle of freakin’ nowhere,” or “You know you’re in Ithaca when you get excited to go to Wegmans.” Beyond taking on the “Ithaca is Gorges” establishment, the shirts would prove strikingly illustrative of the fact that Cornell really is its own world.

When I flew home for Rosh Hashana a short while ago, I couldn’t help but feel that I was returning from an alternate universe in which bros reigned supreme, people had a strange affinity for a cappella and ultimate frisbee was considered a real sport. When I considered Cornell’s beautiful isolation and its copious amounts of work, I quickly realized why I felt so disconnected from the world from which I came. And then I began to worry. Because while it is nice to lose oneself in the work, the fun and the “college experience,” it often comes at the expense of our responsibility as knowledgeable and active members of our local, national and world communities.

I’d like to dub what I experienced as the “Cornell Bubble,” and I’d venture to say its increasingly pervasive on campus. I wonder how many of The Sun’s readers turn to other news outlets for the commentary on national and world affairs that is invariably absent from a college daily? How many people simply aren’t reading The Sun at all, let alone other sources of information?

What is the Goldstone Report, what happened at the United Nations a few weeks ago and how close is Iran to a nuclear bomb? What do you think about missile defense in Eastern Europe, the coup in Honduras or the government’s handling of healthcare? Do students care that the FBI recently arrested three Pakistani-born men in connection with a suspected bomb plot, or are we so absorbed in our own busy lives that we care about little else than finding the weekend’s best party. Bubbles are nice, but they are dangerous when the world is as trying a place as it is today.

Where’s the fire on campus? Where are the cliché college ideologues protesting this, that and the other? Do they only exist in movies? Are today’s issues not important? Are we ignorant or simply apathetic?

Students in Tehran are risking their lives to express their viewpoints about freedom; the closest thing I’ve witnessed to a campus uprising is a near palpable sigh over the Inter-Fraternity Council’s H1N1-induced party ban. We, too, have reason to protest, or at least to be aware of the dangers of our world.

We live in uncertain times: Our country is facing one of the worst financial crises in its history; jobs once guaranteed by a Cornell degree just aren’t there anymore; government debt is through the roof; baby-boomers are aging while Social Security and Medicare prove increasingly insolvent; Islamic fundamentalists threaten our way of life; an avowed genocide inciter and Holocaust denier is dangerously close to getting his hands on a nuclear bomb; human rights violations run rampant; and moral equivalency is pervasive.

The only way we will have a chance at tackling any of the aforementioned problems is if we are aware of them. We need to read newspapers, watch the news and take interest in the world around us. We are, after all, members of the world community.

At 18, young Israeli men and women enter into compulsory military service to their country. Countless brave men and women enter of their own volition in the United States.

They face real issues — life and death issues — while we worry about the freshmen 15. They face real enemies, while we face pre-lims. They are forced to encounter the real world; many of us are not — perhaps at great disservice to ourselves.

We cannot afford to live in our bubbles any longer. It is a luxury, and in times of crisis luxuries are the first to go.