Today is Halloween, as I’m sure we are all aware. One of my favorite things about this holiday is a special event that occured 496 years ago on this day.

Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg, Germany, signaling the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, which would change the course of the Christian Church, and world history, for good.

This event is something I deeply care about for a number of reasons, but I want to focus on why Luther would nail his writings to a door.

It’s simple really. The church door is where everyone would look. It was the town bulletin board.

It’s amazing to think that the guy posted his thoughts on a door and from that simple act important information was able to get out, spreading like wildfire to like-minded people who would change the world, but not before costing many of them their lives.

As students, we all probably have causes we care about. These are convictions that we are more than willing to stand up for. In order to express our opinions, we turn to the “church doors” of our time: tweets, facebook posts and hopefully this paper.

However, I often ask myself this question: once students have expressed their opinions, like Luther did, what happens? Furthermore, how would students react to the issues that need reacting to?

My thought is that we really don’t react at all.

What made Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses to the door effective was the reaction of the people — the feeling bursting forth in their hearts that what was written on that parchment was true and mattered. I’m not convinced that many of us care that much about anything, at least not enough to gain the amount of traction needed to make a difference in this day and age.

A good example of this would be Joseph Kony. Remember that guy? Yeah, me neither, but I’m pretty sure nothing came of our day-long campaign to #stopKony last year.

Why is that?

Well, it’s not that we don’t care; I just don’t think we care with enough focus on what actually affects us. I think we latch on to what’s cool or whatever the culture deems important. I think we often miss the point because we don’t take time to consider what should actually matter to us.

Frankly, I think that the ones in our generation who get the short end of the stick are the ones that actually stick to their guns and express their convictions in a logical and consistent manner. These individuals are those who believe in an idea absolutely, and their intensity and work ethic show it, because they really care.

I’d love to see the organizations on campus that stand for something get the recognition they deserve, but it starts with us actually paying attention to each other, being less concerned with reacting and more focused on listening.

Like I mentioned before, I do see our paper as being one of the many “church doors” that individuals in our campus community can go to when they have information they want to make others aware of.  

More importantly, I see our paper as one where students can ask us questions, where we can in turn ask the people who have answers. We can, and desire to, be advocates for those on our campus who don’t feel they can speak up, or maybe just don’t know how to say what they need to.

As more people begin to speak up, I would also hope people would pay attention to what we are writing and give us feedback. I think this is how we can make the changes we see fit to make on this campus. See the need, listen to others and work together to make a difference.