Just Another Day in America

The threat to college students continues.

They are expelled for protesting. For raising their voices against injustice. For demanding that their education, their rights, and their lives be respected. Our universities—once bastions of critical thought—are crumbling under the weight of administrative cowardice and political pressure. Free speech is punished. Student safety is ignored. Our education is under fire.

And our students—our future—are under fire, literally. Gun violence is a regular part of life on campus. It’s so common, we don’t even flinch. We offer “thoughts and prayers” like they’re currency, like they’re action. But they are not. They are bandaids slapped on bullet wounds.

Today, I was reminded how doomed we are as a society. A meeting began at 2:00. At 2:05, someone brought news of a shooting at Florida State University. By 2:06, the meeting resumed like nothing happened. Like this is normal. Because in America, it is.

Just another day.

I had an interview this afternoon. I asked to reschedule—after all, it felt like the world was on fire. I was told no. Because the world doesn't stop spinning. The world moves on—with or without you. And somehow, that’s become acceptable.

But what kind of dystopia is this, where we no longer wince? Where school shootings barely register? Where genocide unfolds on our timelines? Where mass deportations tear families apart and students—here legally, thriving, contributing—are abducted from the campuses they call home? Where history is erased. Where races are oppressed. Where constitutional checks and balances are trampled. Where a felon run is our president, and people cheer.

Meanwhile, celebrity women take trips to space like it’s a casual coffee run. While our mothers work three jobs just to survive, while our children go to bed hungry in a country that boasts of being “the most privileged on Earth.”

The American Dream? For whom?

We can’t even sleep on the sidewalk if we have no home. We criminalize poverty. We punish protest. We distract ourselves with spectacle while silencing those who cry out for justice.

I keep waiting to wake up. To shake off the fog of this nightmare. But this is it. This is the dream they sold us.

And it’s broken.