One of the popular slogans printed on t-shirts these days is “I is a Kollege Student.” The humor behind it is that you would expect a college student, particularly at a distinguished university like the American University in Cairo (AUC), to have a high level of education and knowledge. Unfortunately, this t-shirt also carries with it a sad truth, the truth about the true level of knowledge that college students at AUC have.
Last week in the Caravan, we had a Q&A regarding the highly significant and relevant issue of what people are referring to as genocide in Darfur, Sudan. A couple of people interviewed were not really aware of what exactly was going on in Darfur and one person did not even know where Darfur was.
The answers came as a shock to us all at the Caravan, and the Q&A became more about the ignorance of AUC students than the real topic of violence and injustice that is taking place in Darfur. 
Not only is Darfur a hop, skip and a jump away from Egypt and not only is there a swelling population of Sudanese refugees from Darfur in Egypt, but you would’ve seriously had to have your head buried between your legs to have missed the news coverage about Darfur in the past few months.
Being a university student is more than just memorizing whatever your professor throws at you so that you can get an A in the course, because while that might increase your precious GPA, it won’t nourish your slowly deteriorating brain. To be fully prepared to go into the real world, you first have to know what’s happening in that real world where your grades don’t count for anything.
But for now, maybe we’ll just make our Q&A questions simpler. Like, “how many times has Britney Spears gone into rehab?”

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