Perhaps you've seen or heard of these books that pose a series of hypothetical questions to challenge your personal ethics. They ask questions like, "Would you accept $100,000 in cash if it meant that your parakeet would die tomorrow?" -- things of that sort. Well, here's another one: Would you accept a negligible reduction in tuition if it meant that a few dozen people you had never heard of would be killed in a country on the other side of the world?

Last Saturday marked the first national day of action against ExxonMobil. The event was created by the Stop ExxonMobil Alliance, an umbrella organization that includes Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Alliance for Democracy, Students for a Free Tibet, the International Labor Rights Fund, Free the Planet and a number of other like-minded organizations. Protests took place all across the country, from the offices of ExxonMobil's lawyers in San Francisco to an Exxon gas station in Manhattan.

At Penn State, we celebrated the day by having a truck-powered parade, driving dozens (if not hundreds) of recreational vehicles across the state to park them next to Beaver Stadium, and having a nighttime concert undoubtedly powered by generators. Our school was burning gas like we were getting paid to do it. And we were.

Last year, ExxonMobil alone contributed more than $20 million to higher education in the United States. According to ExxonMobil's Higher Education Report, dear old State receives $72,000 in departmental grants from the oil giant, as well as $5,000 for engineering programs and the company endows a $20,000 fellowship in Quantitative Geoscience. As the state Legislature continues to slash funding for universities and the Penn State Board of Trustees continues to drive tuition upward, it sure seems like we could use the money. But we don't need this money. Money from ExxonMobil is blood money.

According to the Stop ExxonMobil Alliance, there are five major areas in which the company is making things worse: Money in politics, global warming, human-rights violations, ecosystem destruction and community-health problems. Republican candidates received more than $1.2 million from the company for the 2000 elections. Strangely enough, the United States then quickly pulled out of the Kyoto Protocols, the international treaty aimed at reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions. The government also played a role in the dismissal of the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific organization, at the request of ExxonMobil (the company's February 2001 memo found its way into the public eye in April this year). The panel's most recent report included strong evidence that links the burning of fossil fuels with global climate change, a concept that has never sat well with ExxonMobil, which continues to develop fossil fuel resources without much progress towards renewable energies. ExxonMobil's tentacles spread across the globe and support oppressive regimes on three continents. According to the alliance Web site, the company also has the dubious distinction of being "the first U.S. employer ever to rescind a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation." I won't even go into the environmental gehenna they are slowly but surely bringing about. Pristine arctic wilderness, remaining tropical rainforests, sensitive ocean ecosystems -- you know the drill by now.

I'm willing to concede that there doesn't appear to be a way for us to end our addiction to fossil fuels overnight. However, there are still a number of actions that are feasible. The greater Penn State family can decide to stop buying gas from Exxon and Mobil stations. If even a fraction of the RVs that make their way to State College each weekend choose to give their business to another company, the impact will be dramatic.

Also, this university must make its position on this matter known to the world: Either Penn State is a responsible member of the global community, or it's not. All of us will be witness to this decision, and if Penn State is still taking money from ExxonMobil at this time next year, then everyone will know that our administration and our trustees are hypocrites. You can't aspire to create the leaders of the future, while simultaneously sabotaging parts of the planet. All the money in the world isn't going to do this place any good if it loses integrity, selling out to corporate interests.