With every new semester comes the autopilot questions to classmates that you haven’t seen in a while.

“How was your break, did you go home?” Followed by the copilot response of “it was good, I went home for a little, and it was nice.”

But what’s odd to me is that no one really mentions anything going on in the world.

The question I have is what happened to students being well informed?

The Charlie Hebdo shooting, one of Paris’ most deadly attacks in recent history, just happened weeks ago. Lives were lost because of someone showing their creative expression, for voicing their opinion, something that we Americans hold so dear. The world and its leaders came together to mourn for those who lost their lives.

But I have yet to be asked what my thoughts were on what happened and what should be done. It baffles me how something that draws global attention like that could happen and none of my fellow peers have brought it up in conversation.

Do we not know about it or are we just oblivious to what doesn’t directly affect us?

What kills me is that we are knowledgeable, we seek to gather information and we are not oblivious to what is going on around us yet we choose the latter.

I am no better. I focus on the social immediacy of my life and fail to re-evaluate my priorities in terms of world news because there are more important things going on in my world.

Why is it that when I asked my roommates who the Secretary of State is, no one, including myself knew who it is.

It seems like there is this unspoken understanding that watching the news or reading about what is going on besides pop culture is out of the ordinary or considered ‘hipster.’

We choose to keep scrolling through news apps until there is a familiar name in the headline. We pass the top story that reads, “President meets with college deans to discuss budget cuts,” which has potential to be informative. The top stories that are so immediately scrolled past are usually the most important.

Now I know there are arguments about how the media today is controlling and blindly corrupt. I have taken courses that are strictly on this topic. But this is not about addressing that issue.

This is a request to be informed.

Maybe we should switch up the topic during drunken conversations from why you think Lana Del Rey is too cool or why you aren’t going to Coachella this year.

Knowing a little about how the world is being run could be a good help.