When I asked one of my classmates how he felt about the classification of government information, his response was as terse as it was disappointing. "I don't," he said.

Ask a student you see walking to a class at any college campus in America. The responses rarely vary.

The iPod Generation, with its sleek camera phones and on-demand online news, has all too often simply forgotten about the dirty little secrets that those we empower to run our lives and spend our money hide from us on a daily basis.

We skate across the surface of today's 24-hour news cycle, across the icy layer of the superficial and the celebrity that dominates today’s programming.

So how can anyone blame us?

We are, as the cliché goes, what we eat. As the news becomes increasingly soft and profit-oriented, healthy choices become more and more scarce.

Can I or any other transparency advocate blame a generation choosing from the journalistic equivalent of McDonald's for their unhealthy diet? Logic tells me I must answer no.

Had I never broken through that ice and into the debate room during high school, I, too, might never have discovered the cold waters that lie beneath the surface.

Once I did, the truth was as shocking as any plunge into a wintry lake.

Hundreds of detainees held without charge or due process in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; torture in secret prisons from North Africa to the Middle East to Eastern Europe; illegal wiretapping of American citizens. Every story read like the topic of a high-adrenaline bestseller ready to fall off bookshelves at a Borders or Barnes & Noble near me.

But the stories were true. And the deeper I dove, as I arrived at college and began volunteering at the Freedom of Information Center, the more unbelievable, shocking truths I discovered.

A U.S. government report saying the Iraq war has significantly increased the threat of terrorism, not quelled it; Iraqi insurgents who not only were financially self-sufficient but even earned enough money to fund other terrorists around the world: These kinds of truths made me stare dumbly at my flat new laptop’s screen.

They underscore the necessity of a national dialogue about open government and transparency like Sunshine Week.

Now that I have seen the shadowy world beneath that layer of ice, I wonder how anyone could simply ignore the injustices our votes enable and tax dollars bankroll.

But I don’t wonder long.

I remember the words of the late President Reagan, who famously classified his grades after taking the oath of office: "All you knew is what I told you."

I remembered what I learned in history class: how he had neglected to mention his decision to sell arms to Iran and send the profits to anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua.

I remembered my generation, entirely too young to remember the lesson of the famous Iran-Contra Affair and, like every generation, probably could have paid closer attention during American History.

When I think about how little my generation knows about the indignities of our times, I have to forgive them.

Instead of learning from a young age not to trust our politicians' power to create secrets, we went ice-skating.

This week is Sunshine Week, a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast, and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools, and others interested in the public's right to know.

In The Fray Contributor