Have you ever been at a loss for words? I’ve been having that problem a lot. My freshman year, I was able to debate anyone into a corner. Now it seems I am a rolling whoopee cushion of brain farts. Have I burned out? Or is it that by the time we’ve reached our third year in college we simply become too disconnected and dull to really understand what we’re fighting for?

I don’t know which one it is, but neither one is appealing. The University is a bubble, though a bit more complex than the colorful soapy ones. It isn’t empty in the middle and the surface is harder to rupture. Within it, we mold into a designated role often defined by the similar roles of a group of people. We stick to the assumed predilections and are protected from infiltration from the “outside world.” We are potheads and procrastinators, Greeks, partiers, athletes, hippies, activists, boyfriends and girlfriends. We go into these roles as freshmen, hoping to find our true characters within them. But as we follow these roles and become them, do we start losing sight of what they actually mean?

I thrust myself into the role of an activist. I learned about so many problems in class, I was sure that I can be the solution to at least a couple of them. I had a lot of information and I wanted to employ it. That was then. I fight like a tiger now, but my debating skills have gone down the toilet. The fight has replaced the inflow of relevant information — information that is invaluable in retaining a convincing point but would also make me doubt those convictions. At this stage, if only for my lack of statistical knowledge, I might lose a humanitarian argument with a pro-coal anti-Semite!

There are many activists on campus. We picket and march and write petitions (and in my case plant trees). We fight for cures, education and political reform, environmental justice, etc. My question is, do we really know what we’re fighting for anymore? We rely on limited sources of information, those that somehow infiltrate the bubble. It makes us passionate, but has great potential for misinformation.

Our passion makes us ignore the underlying issues. If we fight for more money to go into our school, shouldn’t we question what other civil services will be cut if we receive it? If we fight for a cure for an illness, shouldn’t we be wondering what caused it in the first place? If we make war against coal, shouldn’t we be asking what our alternatives are?

I’m sure most of you have heard of the anti-coal campaign. It was started by an outsider to our bubble that has now filled it up with smoke. I agree, coal sucks. The mining of it is one of the most appallingly destructive things humanity has ever come up with and the burning of it is just as appalling, only less visible to the naked eye. But what does getting rid of it on campus mean?

Right now we use a combination of wood chips and the “cleanest” affordable coal in the power plant. The use of woodchips has increased approximately 18 percent in the last two years and is continuing to increase. We get our wood chips logging waste and other such pre-consumer recycling. The most popularized solution provided by Beyond Coal is increasing the use of biomass until the plant will run completely off of it. But what will this do? We only have so much of recycled wood chips, soon we will be putting virgin trees into the chipper. The cheapest place to get those trees will be right on campus — our Nature Preserve. Using a chipper is very destructive because the type of tree that goes in is inconsequential, so the practice is similar to mowing; we’d be mowing a forest and President Lois DeFleur would advertise the further “greening” of her school.

Another proposed option by the campaign is geothermal energy. Since Binghamton does not have a geyser or sit on top of an active volcano, we have a problem. The ground really isn’t that hot. As an example, a junior high school in Washington state that is located on a so-called Hot Hole must dig wells over 1,800 feet deep to heat approximately 16 buildings, or 304,971 square feet, compared to Binghamton University’s 120 buildings. Even in Washington, this is not only energy intensive, but water intensive. When the geologic fluid is expended, water must be pumped in to replace it and continue the mechanism. In Binghamton, a huge area of land would have to be broken up and drilled to get any heat out.

My point today is simply to question yourself and your sources. The answers you come up with may not be expected, but they will surely be helpful. In this spirit, I am making a resolution and I hope you can make it with me. I will question my convictions enough so that I will dig deeper into the problem. I will not follow a role, even if it is one I’ve laid out for myself. I will not only fight, but I will learn because the root of any problem is ignorance. I will question the roles of others while avoiding judging them. And I will re-learn to win the arguments that I so staunchly believe in.