There is no doubt WISPIRG had only the best intentions at heart when they decided to host Carnivoil last week. The event on Library Mall offered students a whimsical way to spend passing-time and provided some information as well.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with an event that spreads the word on how detrimental America’s oil addiction is to the world. The anti-Big Oil event didn’t even ruffle any feathers; no one likes that the executives of an oil company have butlers for their butlers while there are people in this country who are born, starve for 17 days and then die. I personally hate the fact that the burning of fossil fuels is pushing us steadily to the brink of a global warming related catastrophe, but so does the vast majority of the University of Wisconsin student population. We didn’t need carnival games to convince us.
I’ve followed WISPIRG at a distance, and I support nearly all of their work, but Carnivoil was a huge waste of time, manpower and resources. WISPIRG has a duty to the tuition-paying students of this university to enlighten us and “work to uncover threats to public health and well-being and fight to end them,” not to raise awareness about causes that already have widespread recognition and are easy to rally around.
The million dollar question is not whether Big Oil is bad, but what the next clean, efficient and, most importantly, convenient, source of energy is. I had a great time at Carnivoil spinning the Petroleum Wheel of Doom, beating up the WASP businessman in Oil Executive Boxing, and releasing some stress at the Big Oil version of the famous Hammer game, but something was really bugging me. There were all these flashing lights, cleverly converted game names and poetic sound bites, but where was their solution?
Attending the Carnivoil was like the bread at Husnus: all filler. It’s great that WISPIRG is spoon-feeding me generic white bread that I along with the majority of 42,099 of my fellow classmates are intimately familiar with, but besides condemning Big Oil, what do they propose we do next? Where is the main course of their argument? I went to Carnivoil to be enlightened, not to re-learn what I already know through mildly challenging strength and coordination games and bright colors.
This then delves into a much larger issue. I understand it is important to raise awareness on issues detrimental to society, and I commend WISPIRG for trying to do just that. However, when all you do is complain and raise hell, are you really helping society, or are you just being detrimental? I’m in no way, shape, or form insinuating that WISPIRG is detrimental to society, and in fact the vast majority of the things they do are extremely beneficial. But in this instance they only added to the excess of complaints and general rabble and wasted resources in the process. If you’re going to use time and money to raise awareness, don’t go after an easy target. Go after issues that aren’t very well known to provide an actual service to students.
Carnivoil was fun. It brought up some important points about the travesties of using fossil fuels. However, this event superfluously burned funds and resources to beat a dead horse and ultimately failed to produce any realistic solutions that we, as an able-bodied student body, could work toward. The next time WISPIRG holds an event, it should offer more than a boxing glove as a solution.
Jonathan Juhn ([email protected]) is a sophomore intending to major in journalism.
