Orange Bubble Syndrome is something that many of us take for granted. We get stuck in a cycle of rotating between weekends at Prospect, weekdays at Firestone and occasional excursions for late meal at Frist. We micromanage our days in GCals of rainbow-colored sleep deprivation. We might stop once in a while to read something from the Prince UPC, complain about P-Safe’s lockout policy, scoff at Dean Malkiel’s dog or laugh at the bicker plans for Cannon Club.

Read the news? Uhhh. I'll pencil that in someday, okay?

But where is the globally aware citizenship that all the admission brochures advertised? Where are the scholars in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations (aside from sharpening their get-recruited-for-I-banking skills in Robertson or Tower, that is)? A Prince column earlier this week (okay, we do read them too) called for more campus dialogue on current events. The Middle East is erupting. Japan is in shambles. Basically, 2011 thus far has reached a point where I expect a new revolution or disaster every time I refresh the NYT homepage.

I know, I know. We’re busy. We’re tired. We work really hard. Sometimes it is easier to just sit in Whitman dining hall, discussing the merits of different types of fruit-cereal-froyo combinations (banana, Smart Start, vanilla. Win!) instead of debating the pros and cons of intervention in Libya.

In the last week or so, though, I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s actually easier than you think to break out of the Orange Bubble. Meaningful campus dialogue can exist! Even when it’s not awkwardly facilitated by Sustained Dialogue! Here, I give you five reasons why we can and should think outside the bubble:

1.) IT’S SO EASY.