This generation is to do things differently. We, the students of 2010, are supposed to have learned from humanity’s past mistakes so that we can become agents of change. Leaders who will stop corporate wrongdoing, help fellow human beings, and eradicate the world’s various plights. On campuses across the country, students are talking about the answers. In classrooms, residence halls, and grassy quads, students are leading us into a bright future.

However, for the ideas that socially responsible students (including myself) hold to become a reality, we must fuse words with action and fight our own hypocrisy.

In the same circle on the quad where students consider ideas to progress the globe, a cloud of gray-blue cigarette smoke hangs in the air. Although I neither question the personal right to smoke, nor pass much personal judgment towards a smoker, the rise of tobacco usage on America’s progressive campuses does pose a question: will our fresh ideas translate into meaningful action?

Students today have grown up with the widest lens of the world that any generation has known. With the advent of the Internet and other modern technologies, we have gained access to real-time data about practically any topic one could wish to pursue.

However, simply having access to information does not mean we are applying that knowledge.

For a considerable amount of time, data has existed showing that the usage of tobacco products have major negative health effects, including lung cancer. For a moment, think about how much anti-smoking material you have been exposed to in your lifetime; on the Internet, billboards, television, radio, and print. These companies earn profits by making products that are addictive lethal poisons. They cost $193 million in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity. I would not hesitate in posing the idea that big tobacco companies are singlehandedly the most surely “evil” multi-national corporations that exist today. It can even hurt your furry friends.The typical college student, smoker or non-smoker, knows this. Even so, as we try to fight wrongdoing in the world, many students continue to support the most detestable corporate conduct one can imagine.

For a brighter future to become a reality, college students must lead the charge. We have to mix our words with action in all aspects. If we are pushing to be green, we must be green. If we say are going to change the world, as idealistic as that sounds, that change in mentality starts with us.

To the smokers out there, this is not an attack on you. Smoking is not the best example of social irresponsibility, but simply the most obvious one I see daily on campus. We all have our vices, and if you are suffering from addiction, you are not a scapegoat.

Nevertheless, if students smoke, especially those who are the most involved in socially responsible causes, this generation loses part of its credibility. It is near impossible to live a hypocrisy free life, but that is a goal that students across the country must strive for. If we do not shape up and show the world we are serious, our ideas will be taken by the rest of society as just that; ideas, not the plans of action that they truly are.