To Do Today:

1) study for law test

2) laundry – wash cape

3) save world (again)

I was at a coffee shop putting together a portfolio for my screenwriting class. For the occasion, I’d treated myself to a slick blue binder. Profusely content with my purchase, I stroked the thing as only a man with an office supply fetish ever should.

Till, that is, my friend pointed out I’d just paid $5 for flimsy plastic. I rose to the defense of the binder, highlighting its finer qualities – the slickness, the inherent blueness. He wasn’t swayed, however, until we discovered the thing was made of 100 percent recycled goods. Now the binder satisfied my love of office supplies and his tree-hugging tendencies.

Paradise was lost, however, when my friend noted the fine print: the binder was made of old milk jugs.

“This supports the milk industry.” With that, the binder was deemed again an emblem of all things evil in the world, which, apparently, includes cow juice and binders.

My friend the tree-hugger is also, you see, a vegan – adamantly opposed to all things which lead to the harvesting of animal byproducts or senseless slaughter of trees.

Even I, a tree-hugging vegetarian myself, am dwarfed in political correctness next to certain other do-gooder students. These particular students are afflicted with some terrible superinvolved-wonderstudent complex that draws them to every political cause within their reach, and then some.

While my generation lacks the passion seen in the riots and rallies of the ’60s and ’70s, we’ve instead adopted a “get involved in everything” approach. It’s admirable – nothing should garner more respect among our peers than being intelligent and dedicated enough to flock to a cause and fight for change.

But it’s as if we’re expending all of our resources in a select few – those willing to get involved, to hold true to beliefs, to hold the picket signs.

It’s not that I lack respect for these all-involved students, for I understand their passion and need to effect change. But the burden lies too heavily on the tired souls that are trying to pick up the slack for a generation of students otherwise known as uninformed and lazy.

Rallying for so many political ideologies will inevitably lead to a head-on collision, too, such as my friend who found my new blue binder 1) materialistic and overpriced, a sign of the over-commercialization of America; 2) made completely of recycled goods, a sign that perhaps people are beginning to realize the damage we’ve done to the environment and are starting to correct errors; or 3) a product of the milk industry, a sign of the incorrect treatment we render unto animals.

Multiple ideologies, regardless of how balanced each stands on its own, cannot all fit into the belief system of just one student. Incidentally, other students – those lacking ideologies all together – cannot expect those struck with the super-involved complex to pick up the slack and save the world all on their own. Some of us will have to take on the roles of supervillains. I can help support the over-commercialization and materialism with my love of overpriced office supplies. But someone else will need to eat the meat my friend and I leave behind. And yet another will have to kill the trees we’re trying to hug when we’re not cooking soy.

Or perhaps some can pick up the slack and relieve the over-idealistic. We’ll pick teams – some will picket for peace; others will fight for religious freedom; 17 will defend the planet from global warming; 10 shall save the baby cows and chickens (another team will focus on cuter animals); fourteen will demand that Staples use more recycled paper products.

I’ll be on a team or two, so long as the office supplies supply remains unharmed. But the ultra-PC burden being forced on the idealists has to be lifted. Rather than shoving square pegs through round holes, we’re expecting some to force 14 round pegs through a single round hole. It still won’t work.

Cavan Reagan is a senior in journalism and mass communication and English from Bellevue, Neb. He is the news editor of the Daily.