Campus chaos, tragic realities and grandma's poultice

This week, the Brookings Institute published an article warning that only 36% of seniors in the high school class of 2024 had filed FAFSA applications, which is down 24% from last year. The FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the first step in applying for the recently infamous student loans but is also used to determine eligibility for a variety of other benefits, including state grants, institutional aid, work-study programs, and closer to home, the Nebraska Promise program that supplements grants and scholarships for Nebraska undergrad students.

The article describes the challenges of implementing the 2020 FAFSA Simplification Act, enacted by Congress, to make it easier for an 18-year-old to enter a life of debt servitude without contemplating the likelihood of a return on investment. The behind-schedule rollout of the electronic application echoes the painfully clumsy online debut of the Affordable Care Act ten years ago, which didn’t go particularly well.

A substantial number of those missing applications, driven by software glitches, are expected to materialize by fall. An undetermined portion of that number, however, reflects the class of 24’s perception of diminished value and, in rural America, concerns that academia has become dominated by a cultural and political “other.” Whatever the case, colleges are bracing themselves for diminished rates of enrollment and some overdue self-examination.

As though our Universities didn’t have enough self-inflicted damage, campuses throughout the United States are experiencing a rash of pro-Palistinian protests. Comparisons with the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s are inevitable, but significant differences exist.

In the 1960s, students protested a widely misunderstood war that was not always well executed and for which they could be drafted against their will. The stakes were high and potentially fatal. The current campus mayhem shares none of those attributes and is suspected of being driven by “outside agitators,” yet students continue to protest with a sense of purpose.

As I try to understand what would make American college students side with a confirmed terrorist organization, my mind keeps returning to the phrase “genocide,” as used by protestors to describe the approximately 34,500 Palestinian Arabs killed since October 7.

Hamas claims that of the 34,500 deaths, 24,000 have been civilians, which pencils out to about 70% of total fatalities. While claims of casualties during times of war are notoriously propaganda-driven, history tells us that civilian fatalities often exceed military deaths. In World War II, the ratio was only slightly higher at 73%, but that includes Hitler’s systematic extermination of six million Jewish folks and causes me to reluctantly admit that the agitators might have grounds for an argument.

The Israeli Defense Force insists that they are taking all reasonable measures to mitigate civilian casualties, and I want to believe them. So why the horrendous number?

The area of Gaza is 141 square miles. For comparison, Omaha covers 143 square miles, but here’s the hitch. Omaha’s population was pegged at 486,051 in 2020, but the population of slightly smaller Gaza is estimated at 2,141,643. Gaza’s population density is more than 20% higher than that of New York City and twice that of Chicago, making collateral damages in high numbers inevitable.

While I remain convinced that Israel has a legal and righteous cause to eliminate the existential threat posed by Hamas, the human tragedy behind those numbers is chilling. As of this writing, both sides are floating terms for a cease-fire. Let’s hope that happens soon, but in a way that ensures a peaceful future for Israelis.

If all that leaves you disappointed with humanity, consider the recent story about “Rakus,” the Indonesian orangutan. Rakus acquired a nasty gash under his right eye while pursuing his orangutan duties, foraging for food, and maintaining territorial domination. Rakus was then observed chewing the leaves of the “akar kuning” plant and treating his wound with what our great grandmothers would have called a “poultice,” becoming the first documented evidence of non-human deliberately treating a wound with a medicinal plant.

I have always been fascinated by the similarities we share with other mammals and have long suspected that we underestimate them terribly. This story, on the other hand, tells us more about ourselves. As I think about whether the recipe for Grandma’s poultice was brought here from Europe or borrowed from Native Americans, Rakus reminds me that those origins are relatively recent and similar traditions were likely handed down through pre-history. The recipe for Grandma’s poultice might go back a bit farther than I had fully considered.