| Within the past year, student
protests against the war in Iraq have made their way to the front
covers of our newspapers and the top stories of our nightly newscasts.
While this issue may spur the most media attention, movements dealing
with other issues such as debates over
curricula and the Chinese occupation of Tibet are fixtures of
modern college campuses throughout the country. To think that instances
of activism such as these are recent phenomena would be a mistake,
though, as student protesting dates to the fourth century and the
Middle Ages. Likewise, American students declared their opposition
to British rule in the 18th century and slavery during the 19th.
However, these past movements were quite different in style from
those on college campuses today. Only within the last hundred years
has American student activism evolved into its current form. The
1930s mark the first important era in the contemporary history of
student movements, while many consider the events of the 1960s to
be the most memorable period. Today, campus activism continues old
trends as well as establishes new ones.
The first wave of student activism took place
against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Although the first
national student organizations had been formed in the wake of World
War I, postwar prosperity led university populations to favor conservative
goals. The Depression and the rise of fascism, however, helped to
shift political attitudes to become increasingly progressive. During
the 1930s, the American Student Union (ASU), formed from the merger
of the National Student League and the Student League for Industrial
Democracy (SLID), gained mass appeal at colleges nationwide. Domestically,
the group sought more government funding of education and provision
of jobs, increased [academic freedom] and the protection of free
speech. Moreover, it strived to gain collective bargaining rights
and to encourage racial equality.
On international issues, however, the Union
generally took a pacifist stance. Its members held antiwar strikes
yearly, called for the abolition of the Reserve Officer Training
Corps (ROTC) program and were vocal in the American Peace movement
of the 1930s. Yet the group was not always impartial in disputes,
for it supported the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. According
to Thomas Thurston and Robert Cohen in their article, The
American Student Movement of the 1930s, the involvement of the
Union in foreign affairs would lead to its own downfall. Communists
gained control of the ASU and endorsed the Soviet non-aggression
pact with Germany. This event effectively "isolated the non-Communists
in the ASU leadership, destroyed the group's alliance with liberals
within the New Deal, and alienated the great numbers of American
college students who had looked to the ASU for leadership."
Actions by the Communist leaders of the American Student Union,
therefore, eroded the ties among its various constituent groups.
With its unity dissolved, the ASU was significantly weaker and,
along with the movement as a whole, would collapse at the end of
the decade. In spite of its demise, though, Thurston
and Cohen argue that the group "was an important precursor
to the student movements of the 1960s and beyond." Thus, the
ASU helped to set the stage for activists in decades to follow.
The mass popularity and media attention the Union enjoyed at its
Depression-Era peak make it significant in student movement history.
During the 1960s, the Vietnam War replaced
the Great Depression as the backdrop for the next great wave of
student activism. In the second half of the decade, demonstrations
against the increased U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia
took place in numerous cities. According to The
Columbia Encyclopedia, "Much of the impetus for the antiwar
protests came from college students. Objections to the military
draft led some protesters to burn their draft cards and to refuse
to obey induction notices." Thus, although students may not
have been the only participants in these demonstrations, they played
an important role in them; a prime means by which they did so was
their interference with and disobedience of military draft procedures.
Moreover, student organizations often sponsored protests. For example,
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical group advocating
participatory democracy, organized numerous demonstrations during
the decade. The association was formed in 1960 and became popular
as the antiwar movement grew.
One particularly tragic protest occurred at
Kent State University in 1970. After an ROTC building was burned
down, the Ohio governor ordered the National Guard to intervene.
Professor
Gregory Payne states in the Chronology on his website, The May
4 Archive, that, "[General] Canterbury [had concluded] that
the crowd [had] dispersed and [ordered] the Guard to march back
to the Commons area. Most of the students … [had begun] walking
away from the area… [when] twenty-eight Guardsmen suddenly
[turned] around 180 degrees, … and [fired] their weapons into
the group." Payne's account indicates that the National Guard
shot at an obedient group without due warning. Ironically, only
one of the four students killed was a protester. The incident led
to demonstrations at universities across the nation, which in turn
forced some campuses to close. The Vietnam War may have served as
the impetus formany protests, but it was
not the only cause of discontent.
In addition to antiwar demonstrations, the Free
Speech Movement at the UC Berkeley campus was another major source
of conflict during the sixties. This group, led by Mario Savio,
arose in 1964 when university administrators
decided to enforce a ban on campus political advocacy. Students
who did not abide by the rules were taken into custody. Their arrest
led others to stage a series of sit-ins in protest. After three
months of crusading, the activists would prove victorious in early
1965, when campus officials gave in to the students' demands for
free speech rights.
This highly activist climate also helped the
first national teaching assistant unions to become recognized. In
1969, the Teaching Assistants' Association (TAA), located at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, became the first such union in
the country. According to Professor Gregory M. Saltzman in his article,
Union
Organizing and the Law: Part-Time Faculty and Graduate Teaching
Assistants, "Student activism associated with Vietnam War
protests fueled the TAA's recognition drive." Thus, the anti-war
movement as well as other student movements of the era generated
calls for TA unionization, which
in turn led to the successful drive by the TAA in Madison. Although
the events of the 1930s were influential for activists, the movements
that followed thirty years later would be remembered as the peak
of 20th century student progressivism.
In the same way that 1960s activists had the
Vietnam War against which to protest, contemporary students have
the invasion of Iraq. However, the nature of protests has changed
considerably from that of the past. For example, one criticism often
levied against modern students is that they are less visible than
their predecessors. In her article, Student
Presence Lacking at Washington Protest, written for StudentUnderground.com,
Liz Munsell noted that the proportion of students at a recent demonstration
was fewer than that at Vietnam-era rallies. She hypothesized this
was because of student apathy, their time and budget constraints
as well as the lack of a military draft.
However, Diana Alvarado disagrees that students
are less engaged. Rather, she believes their decreased visibility
is the result of their new forms of participation. In her article,
Student
Activism Today, she claims that, "no single compelling
issue today mobilizes students. Student activism has become more
dispersed, but no less influential." Thus, present-day activists
focus on a wide range of issues rather than a single one and as
a result appear less involved on the whole. Her claim is supported
by the fact that recent movements have addressed the war, corporatization,
sweatshop labor, the firing of individuals on campus and TA contract
agreements. In early 2001, UCLA
student activists made national headlines when they took over
Royce Hall to protest the University's policy on affirmative action.
Students may be involved with multiple movements, but are still
effective in promoting change. For example, Cal students successfully
persuaded their student store in 2000 to stop selling sweatshop-produced
clothing. Alvarado
also believes that students seem less active due to their focus
on local issues rather than national ones, for "the national
media tends not to cover this level of student involvement in civic
life." Thus, news outlets prefer national issues and as a result
tend to ignore student movements that bring about local changes.
Apart from being involved in more numerous
and local issues, present-day activists also have better technologies
at their disposal to use in organizing campaigns. The most prominent
of such innovations is the Internet, which has facilitated communication
within and among movements. Groups can maintain mailing lists of
their members and target the public through their audio and video
enhanced websites. This potential was realized as early as 1995,
when students used e-mail lists to organize protests against Proposition
187 in California and the Republican Party's 'Contract With America'
agenda. Moreover, the Internet has permitted groups sharing the
same aim to coordinate their strategies effectively. For example,
activist groups used the Internet to align and form coalitions with
organizations worldwide in 1999 in order to demonstrate against
the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Technologies such as the
Internet have proved helpful to modern activists in recruiting and
communicating with one another and thus in pursuing their goals.
While images of the 1960s protests may be the most remembered, student
movements have been present in American life throughout the twentieth
century. Interestingly, in some respects the movements have shared
similar goals. Movements of the thirties, the sixties and the present
have opposed war and endorsed collective bargaining rights for students
such as TAs. Yet the nature of student activism has clearly evolved.
Activists of the modern era may be less visible than their predecessors,
but they remain involved. They also have the advantage of improved
communications technologies such as the Internet to help them in
orchestrating their drives. Although such changes may decrease the
visibility of individual movements, student activism is a vital
force on university campuses and will continue to be in the coming
century.
For further information, please visit:
1. http://www.plannersnetwork.org:
The Planners Network
2. http://www.campusactivism.org:
Tools for Progressive Student Activists
3. http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Housing/8930/index.html:
Student Activist Resources for Challenging Corporate Control of
Universities
4. http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org:
Students for a Free Tibet
5. http://www.bamn.com:
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration, and Fight
For Equality By Any Means Necessary
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