Critical Mass

According to CM reader Janelle, "California college students would love to have some sort of protest so crazy it would invoke the wrath of the Governator, or even better--the federal government. Similar to the Kent State shootings in 1970, but perhaps without the deaths. I know quite a few people who admire the protests of the 60's and 70's and sort of look upon such racous [sic] radicalism with admiration and would see a Kent State- like scenario as a badge of courage."  Quad blogger Seth Simmons adds, "I think a bunch of the leftist professors on campuses across the nation are upset that students today are generally far more conservative than their 1960-70s counterparts. And even the lefty students who protest are considerably less radical (in action, not belief) today."  An interesting thought, one I thought I might look a little into.

First, consider the UCSC protest I mentioned in the post these comments came from, California College Roundup.  According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the approximately "150 students [were] protesting a host of issues, from cuts in humanities programs to UC nuclear research."  Hrm, those seem like appropriate reasons to hold a group of regents hostage.  Unfortunately, the students (though negotiating with the locked-up administrators via cell phone) may not have made their point clearly.  One regent, Odessa Johnson, said later "I'm standing in there for an hour thinking, 'I wish they had come inside during the public comment period [. . .].  We didn't even know what the issues were."  Of course, the protestors’ spokesman said "The public comment process [. . .] is 'a farce,' because regents don't take student input seriously."  I'm sure holding them hostage for an hour helped the regents see how down to earth the students' views really are.

But protests aren't limited to California.  Washington's Gallaudet University has been in the news lately because of the raucous protests there.  The Boston Globe's website [registration may be required] reported on October 13, "Student protest shutters school," and says:

Hundreds of protesters locked arms yesterday, forming a human chain that kept administrators and reporters off campus. Banging drums and speaking through interpreters, the demonstrators said that provost Jane Fernandes has not been sensitive to the needs of the student body.

``I'm here because we have a failure in leadership," student Tara Holcomb said.

Holcomb, 21, said the school has been plagued by discrimination, mistreatment of students by campus security, and insensitive leadership.

Things may have gotten a little bit bigger than they expected.  An Associated Press story today reports that school officials "brought in heavy construction equipment Wednesday to open one of the gates that protesting students had been blocking for 20 days," injuring at least one student in the process:

Graduate student Brian Morrison said his toe was injured when workers moved one of the gates, sending its wheels over one of his toes.

"I was just standing there peacefully holding the gate with my arms and got injured doing so," he said.

Sometimes you've got to take one for the team.  [On a side note, when did construction become a legitimate enough news topic that it needed its own categorical link?]

But let's face it: so far, these have been internal problems.  Sure, protestors might be getting a little out of hand in these cases, but it's nothing in comparison to the violent demonstrations of the 1960s and 70s, partially because those were about national issues.  To be fair, let's look at some recent protests with similar foci.

The Rutland Herald of Rutland, Vermont, has a story today about yesterday's protest against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at Middlebury College:

Student protesters dressed as prisoners from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay demonstrated Tuesday outside a college chapel where U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was to speak.

About 15 demonstrators stood in a steady drizzle as hundreds of their Middlebury College classmates filed into Mead Memorial Chapel to hear Roberts, most ignoring the protesters.

Four wore mock prison garb. Two were in bare feet, standing silently on wooden crates, posed like the prisoners pictured in photographs from the Iraq prison where U. S. forces allegedly tortured inmates in 2003.

Two others wore orange jail-type pants, attempting to look like detainees at U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"This is not a Halloween costume," read the cardboard sign that hung from a demonstrator's neck. "Where are the ghost detainees now?"

As they stood silently, another protester led others in call-and-response chants, calling out "Our bodies, our choices, Justice Roberts, hear our voices."

"We're not protesting against Roberts," said Mike Ives, 22, a senior from Larchmont, N.Y., speaking through his hood. "We're demonstrating about issues we care about and that he has enormous sway over."

The protest remained peaceful, with uniformed campus security officers standing by and college officials watching from nearby.

"It's the nature of an academic institution," said Michael McKenna, vice president of communications for Middlebury College, raising his voice in an interview to be heard over the chants. "It's part of our tradition to bring in speakers of all backgrounds and encourage diversity. This is in the best tradition of American higher education.

At least they were peaceable, I'll give them that.  However, again, their point may not have been made all that clearly:

The demonstrations were organized by a coalition of student groups that see [Roberts] as a "potential threat" to reproductive rights, the environment and racial equality, the groups said.

What those have to do with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, I'm not sure. 

Then there's the protest of President Bush during his recent visit to Keystone College in Pennsylvania.  The New Age Examiner has a story from the Wyoming County Press Examiner about the protest, which documented the silent protest:

The protestors carried signs with messages like "No child left unrecruited" or "Love is the answer." Many of them dressed in black and some wore black tape over their mouths to symbolize their belief that Bush's administration stifles free expression.

Vicki Ross of Hop Bottom displayed a banner which read, "We pray for your impeachment."

"Impeachment is important," Ross said, "because if we ignore things, then they're grandfathered in like it's okay. It's not okay."

As the time of the president's arrival neared, many of the protestors went silent to mourn the loss of soldiers' lives in the war in Iraq.

Not everyone remained silent, though. As the president's motorcade approached, one of the most vocal protestors was a minister from the Scranton area. Father Bill Pickard of Urban Ministries shouted, "This war spreads terror."

Pickard said he attended the protest because he disagrees with the president's policies on "war, immigration, human rights, interrogation - a number of issues."

"President Bush doesn't speak for the majority of religious people in America," Pickard added.

"No child left unrecruited."  I have to admit, that is better than "Army Strong," the Army's new slogan.  However, I think these students might be getting confused with places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where warring groups actually use child soldiers.  (By the way, I want to clarify, I don't think child soldiery is a laughing matter, and neither do folks like those at Invisible Children, who are fighting for the orphans of Uganda.  There are a number of coalitions out there to end children's use as soldiers, but this is the only one I am personally familiar with.)

Not all protests are for liberal causes, however.  The Brownsville Herald ran a story today about Valley Christian High School in Texas, where "the entire school participated in a 'Silence Mourning' to protest abortion."

Students wore red tape over their mouths with the word “life” written in black letters. Others wore red bands on their arms in a pro-life statement. A sign on the door lamented the “tragedy of over 50,000,000 aborted children” and more than 4,000 killed a day.

The school was participating in a national Day of Silence promoted by several religious groups across the country. [. . .]

It was the students who decided to organize the Day of Silence, said Hanson, who is also the principal. The Student Council wanted to be involved in the national movement because it stands for justice and righteousness, said his wife, Gail Hanson, who oversees the council.

[. . .] Paul Hanson read from the U.S. Constitution, quoting passages that guaranteed freedom of religion and assembly.

“What we’re doing this morning is extremely patriotic,” he said to the circle of students.

And then, one by one, students removed the red tape from their mouths to pray for the sake of abolishing abortion.

After a moment of silence, the circle clapped hands, and the lunch bell rang. None of the students had to participate, Paul Hanson said, but they all wanted to. They’re activists, Gail Hanson said.

What with all of these recent protests (consider how many of these stories are from today alone), one might think students across the country are actively involved in politics, even if they are letting their passions overwhelm their reason.  Not so says Kyle Szarzynski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Badger Herald.  According to Mr. Szarzynski, while in the late 1960s students activists protested the "obvious injustice" of the Vietnam war, today's "similar type of war in Iraq" provokes a far different response:

Despite Madison’s liberal reputation, the sad — or perhaps shameful — reality is that few UW students have ever taken part in any sort of organized anti-war effort. Over the last few years, there has been a march here, a counter-recruitment demonstration there, but nothing that could be defined as a real movement against the war. Of course, this isn’t just a local phenomenon; the inability to jump-start an anti-war movement in Madison has been echoed throughout the country.

We all know of the tragedy that is Iraq, says Mr. Szarzynski.  The egregiously high number of deaths.  The obvious lies that got us into the war.  The nefarious Bush administration.  Why then the lack of organized protest? 

One contributing factor to the complacency of Americans is the relative complacency of their own media. Unlike the footage of the Vietnam War, the media today generally doesn’t broadcast the horrors of war. Dead bodies, mutilated children and demolished homes usually aren’t available for the American viewer to see. Obviously, this tends to dull the anger that most Americans feel about the war.

Hrm, I seem to remember something about CNN airing a video of insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers just the other night.  (Of course, they did "[dip] to black at the moment of actual impact of the rounds," so that the images would not be "too horrific.")  Rep. Duncan Hunter of California questioned CNN's airing of the film, asking "Does CNN want America to win this thing?" and asserting that "In past wars, [. . .] the press was more pro-American," according to Forbes.  But why else might activism be failing its obvious cause?

Perhaps the most important reason for the lack of action against the war, though, is the absence of a draft. If thousands of young Americans were forced to fight an immoral war, then the obvious response would be active opposition. History would indicate this to be the case, as every major anti-war movement of the 20th century — from Canadian opposition to World War One to the French protests against their country’s colonialism in Indochina and Algeria — has featured mandatory military service.

So what I am to take from Mr. Szarzynski's column is that the way to lose the war in Iraq (erps, I mean to rally anti-war protestors) is to show more dead Americans on TV, and to draft more American youth into the military.  The latter seems to be in conflict with Keystone's protestors, though they are arguing for similar causes.  At least Szarzynski ends his column well:

It is only by getting involved with the movement through groups like CAN [the Campus Anti-War Network] that any hope of ending the bloodshed in Iraq in the near future is possible. It is only through organization that we can hope to create an effective struggle against the war and, once again, fill the streets with anti-war activists.

Filling the streets with anti-war activists.  Just what we need.  Maybe that is actually the problem, however.  Alicia Colon of the New York Sun wrote on October 10 that it was the 1968 student protest at Columbia University that destroyed her long-held admiration for the school:

My infatuation ended when the Columbia students rioted in 1968, proving that the revered university accepted morons into its hallowed halls. The riot that took place last Wednesday showed that Columbia hasn't changed its admission standards. [. . .]

It wasn't their decision to protest these issues [students felt the university was complicit in the Vietnam War by allowing ROTC drills on the South Field, military and CIA recruiters on campus, and military experiments in its labs] that led to the forfeit of my respect, but the manner in which these protests were conducted. I loathe violence, having witnessed so much of it in the barrio of my childhood. I can certainly understand protests such as those that occur in underdeveloped countries, where the hopelessness of life leaves few options for escape other than to violently overthrow the ruling powers. The Columbia student protesters did not fit into that category. These well-fed, middle-class individuals with the promise of the good life ahead of them trashed, burned, and stole university property and generally behaved like barbaric peasants.

 At the heart of Ms. Colon's article, however, is a quote from Richard Ranlet, author of the book Richard B. Morris and American History in the Twentieth Century.

"How could the war be ended by radical students urinating out of windows, as they did, or by their screaming obscenities, or by their very public sexual intercourse on the campus, which disgusted Morris?"

Similarly one might ask "How could illegal immigrants be helped by radical students shouting racial epithets at campus speakers or physically assaulting them on stage," as happened recently at Columbia, or "How could reproductive rights, the environment and racial equality be protected by dressing up like terrorist prisoners," or "How could the war in Iraq be ended by reinstituting the draft?" (Actually, I'll field that one: we pump a bunch more soldiers into the country and actually beat the terrorists, rather than just playing political footsie with them.)

The fact of the matter is, though protests may attract a lot of attention, they are not going to be as effective as real political activism (i.e., contacting your senator, or better yet, actively involving others in the political process by engaging them in rational conversation about what they can do) and cordiality.  Some have drawn comparisons between the recent Columbia debacle and the 1968 student protest there.  I say, let them.  Both made the students look boorish and intolerant, and ultimately achieved little or nothing.  Protests draw headlines, but it takes real leadership to accomplish anything.

I just hope we don't have another Kent State.

[By the way, for more information about student political activism, check out exhibits like Northwestern University Library's "Student Life and Culture: Authority, Opposition and the Creation of New Traditions."]