Dear students, teachers, faculty, staff and any other community members who may have the privilege of reading this.

Most of you don’t know me. Maybe you’ve seen me around campus. Maybe you’ve had a class with me. You may have seen me sitting in the cafeteria, book in one hand, turkey sandwich in the other. There is an infinite amount of settings and situations in which we may have crossed paths.

But while you may have seen me, one thing is almost for certain. You didn’t notice me.

You see, for the most part, I like to keep it low key. I don’t speak up in class and I certainly don’t go out of my way when it comes to making friends. As it is, I can barely deal with the ones I have now.

So why then, have I chosen such a public forum to let my presence be known?

Why would I commit my personal thoughts to paper for the whole world (or at least the City College community) to see? Well for one, it’s the first step in my ultimate goal of writing for Vanity Fair. And two, and more importantly, it’s because I’ve reached a point where I just can’t stay quiet anymore.

We live in a nation where Jersey Shore cast members are getting paid thousands of dollars to appear at a club, where athletes are signing multi-million dollar contracts, where CEO’s of corporations are making unimaginable profits from the layoffs’ of their employees.

We live in a nation where all this is happening and yet we can’t seem to find the money to provide health insurance for everyone. We still have people starving and sleeping on the streets. All these athletes and entertainers are living the good life while over 6,000 students in the San Diego Community College District couldn’t get a single class this semester because of the budget cuts.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this seems like a pretty skewed way to have a country set up, especially one that was supposed to be one of, if not the, world leader.

So while I can’t do much about the people getting these obscene amounts of money for playing with balls, I can point out the people who are putting them on a pedestal. I can point out the failings of our educational system (I’m looking at you, girl in my English class, that asked “What’s democracy?”) that allow these things to happen.

My hope is that through this column I’ll wake up some sleeping minds. I hope to get people thinking and asking questions about the problems facing us, both in our community and worldwide.

But it won’t be all doom and gloom. There’ll be uplifting stories, funny anecdotes and random rants and raves. For the most part though, I’ll be looking to raise some hell.

Heric Rubio is the City Times opinion editor