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The Vietnam War Is Long Over. The Call For Civil Rights Has At Least Been Partially Answered. Today's Student Activists Look To Their Community As They Try To Change The World By Melissa Hostetler In November 1968, the Oakland, Calif., police recruiters came to the Kent campus. In protest of this police force, which they called racist and violent, African-American students and others walked off campus to set up a university in exile. Students returned only when the administration set in motion efforts to recruit more students and faculty of color and to create an Afro-American Studies program (now called the Pan-African Studies department).
Police actions, building occupations or flying bullets on campus are not a typical occurrence today -- at least not at Kent State. Students are taking action throughout campus, though. Whether it is making memorials of the parking spaces where four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard nearly 30 years ago, or ensuring the campus and society offer the same opportunities and advantages to students of all races, students are raising their voices over issues they feel are important. Animal rights, freedom for political prisoners, racial equality, gay and lesbian rights, and other causes are being championed by students through rallies, forums and bulletin boards across campus. The 1960s was a unique decade in American history, especially in terms of student activism, because those years presented a time of action that is yet unparalleled. Today, student activists are fighting the ills of society and the world, but they are dispersed over many causes. No common cause links students together, but activists still try to foster a community around changing the world. There are fewer national issues to unite students than there were in the '60s, but students are active nationally and locally. The label of apathy that "Generation X" has so often been tagged with has been proved false. Researchers, professors and students have found that college students today are almost as active as their predecessors. But community issues get students fired up today. Students don't have body bags to identify, says Robby Stamps, a Kent State graduate student in journalism and mass communication. Stamps protested at Kent State on May 4, 1970, and was one of 13 students wounded by Ohio National Guard gunfire. "There is no national issue that is pervasive," says Jerry M. Lewis, Kent State emeritus professor of sociology who taught at Kent during the Vietnam era and witnessed the May 4 shootings. "So, activists of today, and there are some, tend to work on local issues, which are important to them but certainly don't have the pervasiveness that existed in the '60s."
"Students in the late '60s perceived political and social events as dramatically affecting their lives," says Tom Hensley, professor of political science at Kent State who taught during the height of student activism. "And it did. We were in a period of incredibly profound change, and we were involved in events that dramatically affected students' lives. Certainly the Vietnam War was literally a matter of life and death for male students." Though our generation was confronted with war in the Persian Gulf in 1990, it was largely a technological war with few American casualties. Despite the lack of a life-shaping or culture-defining events, students today work as hard and feel as strongly as students of the '60s who concerned themselves with anti-war and civil rights issues, Lewis says. Actually, one issue that may hinder student activism today is that students work too hard in their part- or full-time jobs. "Most students have to work," says senior Kim Larson, co-chair of the May 4th Task Force and president of Kent's chapter of Amnesty International, a human rights organization that fights to release political prisoners of conscience. "Back in the '60s, many students didn't have to. College is no longer just a place to become enlightened. Now it's just a rite of passage, and you go there because you're not going to get a job if you don't go to college, basically. In the past, you went to college if you wanted a scholarly education where you learned about all the philosophers. I think a lot of the problem is really just environment, and that students just don't have time." In fact, students are spending more of their time working than participating in extracurricular activities. An annual survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a periodical covering issues in higher education, showed in 1997 that 40.3 percent of fresh men get a job to help pay college expenses, and 6.2 percent take on full-time jobs. Students may be taking on more jobs than in previous years because the amount of financial aid offered to students has changed. The balance between student grants and loans has definitely shifted, says Mark Evans, interim director of student financial aid at Kent State. Students' annual loan limits have increased while federal and state grants have not. Evans says between 1990 and 1998, federal loans increased from $25 million to $78 million, while federal and state grants increased from $12 million to $15.5 million. Larson says students must choose whether to be activists or to complete school in four years. Larson's choice: This is her sixth year at Kent because she chose to work and be active on campus. "We can't compare ourselves to the people of the '60s anymore," she says. "I think that has limited students by trying to compare ourselves to those activists when you can't possibly do it. The environment is totally different. The social problems still exist, yet it's a different environment you are working in." But being an activist does not always mean taking to the streets and protesting, Stamps says. "Students don't have the leisure time today that we had back then," Stamps says. But that is no reason not to be active, he says. Students can do many things as individuals to support causes. Stamps believes if students purchase socially conscious products, do not eat red meat or binge drink, they are making a profound impact on their world.
"Student activism is good, but I think student activism needs to take on new forms," says Timothy Moore, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Moore was a freshman at Kent in 1969. "It shouldn't be so much confrontation on a physical level. Getting out and having protest rallies would get people angry and lead to fighting and physical confrontation between so-called good guys and bad guys. We don't need verbal confrontations leading to violent confrontation." The forums provided by groups such as Amnesty International and Stand, an independent student newspaper, are a step in the right direction, Moore says. Forums and discussions allow issues and concerns to be brought to light and allow people to make informed decisions without the threat of violence. The Review of Higher Education reports that student activism today has almost reached the level of 1969, which was close to the height of campus unrest. In a study conducted from 1992 to 1997, 25 percent of undergraduates reported they had participated in a demonstration. This compared to 28 percent in 1969 and 19 percent in 1976. Though the number of reported student activists today is close to that of 1969, it is the local focus of activism that leaves protest activities nearly invisible to the public at large. Many blame the news media for the low-profile coverage given to student activism. In a society that is largely dependent upon television for information, activism is rarely on the press's agenda. "By the mainstream press, student activists are portrayed as silly radicals," says Nikki Morse, development director for the Boston-based Center for Campus Organizing, a national network for progressive campus organizations. Morse believes the media should talk more about actual student campaigns and victories. She says that because the mainstream media generally ignore student protest, the left-leaning press should be actively supporting these progressive student movements. But being misrepresented or ignored is nothing new to student activists. In fact, it is a common myth that a majority of the student body in the '60s were activists. Hensley estimates that of the 20,000 students at Kent in 1969, there were 3,000 at the May 4 rally. Of those who attended, 2,500 were spectators or "cheerleaders," leaving a core group of 500 activists. "If anything should trigger student activism, those events should, because you had a dramatic increase in the Vietnam War and you had the campus occupied by 1,000 members of the Ohio National Guard," Hensley says. "So, if that is not going to trigger student activism, then what is?" Those who were activists of the time were not seen favorably. Hensley recalls that opinion polls after the May 4 shootings showed little support for students and relatively little public outrage over the shootings. Stamps agrees. "A lot of us were regarded very negatively not only because of our position on the war,' he says. "It had to do with our long hair, the clothes we wore and the marijuana we smoked." Possibly because of those negative stereotypes, students have turned to subtler methods of initiating change. One thing that has gotten national attention is volunteerism. Though volunteerism rarely involves sit-ins or boycotts, some say it is a form of activism. "People tend to forget that it is a form of political action because they are out there trying to solve problems," says Susan MacManus, professor of political science at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and author of "Young Versus Old: Generational Combat in the 21st Century." The volunteerism rate among incoming college students is rising. The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, in its annual report of first-year students nationwide, reported that 74.2 percent of freshmen in 1998 performed volunteer work in the past year, and 42.1 percent donated their time for at least an hour a week. The survey also reported that only 21.3 percent of the students attended high schools where volunteering was a graduation requirement. Although these results look promising for the future of activism, only 18.9 percent of those who claimed to volunteer said they would continue volunteering. Student interest in activism and volunteerism may dwindle in college partly because students are driven economically. "Generally, they don't have fire in their bellies, and they aren't in the streets like students of the '60s," MacManus says. "They are driven more by economics than politics." John T. Hubbell, director of Kent State University press and professor of history who taught during the '60s, places the blame more on society and universities than students. "In the '60s, there seemed to be among undergraduates more of a sense of doing something that was socially redemptive, and that seems a little less so now. The difference was that when they were in high school, the movie 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was out, and they all wanted to be like Atticus Finch. People came along a few years later, and they wanted to be like 'L.A. Law,' a bunch of money-grubbers and ambulance chasers and divorce lawyers. I don't think it's an accident. I think during the Reagan years materialism and conspicuous consumption were encouraged." Hubbell is suspicious of the universities' role in this behavior. "I am not sure that universities as institutions promote altruistic behavior," Hubbell says. "Why do we tell you to stay in school after all? We talk about wages. You'll make more money if you graduate from college or high school. We don't say, well, if you learn certain things, it will be helpful to you. I think universities as institutions (tend) to emulate corporations and become amoral and not altruistic." Moore says students today are more concerned with how they look than how they think. "We are preoccupied with teaching them how to make a living, and we've gotten away from teaching people how to live," Moore says. Hubbell and Moore are not alone in saying that colleges and universities should be helping to promote social activism. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 62.6 percent of full-time faculty members nationwide say colleges and universities should be actively involved in solving social problems. Larson says she believes the university's lack of social concern dissuades students from being active. "A lot of times, I think they don't really know how to get involved, and I know our campus does not really encourage involvement in the sense of getting involved in organizations," Larson says. "They make us pretty hard to see." With activist actions and battles remaining largely underground and universities seeking order over action, student activists get lost in the shuffle of a business-as-usual society. So, is it really that students are apathetic? Given that students are less interested in politics in its traditional definition (the Chronicle reported that only 13.7 percent of students frequently discussed politics and 26.7 percent felt that keeping up with political affairs was important), students are far from disinterested in events that affect their lives. "We have a totally different type of student now,"Larson says. "It's not that we are apathetic, but we live in a totally different time." Richard Flacks, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the stereotype of "Generation X" is largely overblown. "The Gen X image of apathy doesn't account for the fact that there is a good amount of protest activity and a good amount of service activism," Flacks says. "There are those who are cut off from the world, but that doesn't characterize the whole student body." But the climate for student activism is promising. National organizations are springing up in hope of creating a national student movement. But just as campus activism is diverse, so are the national organizations. "We know that student activists can be a catalyst for larger movements," says Nikki Morse, development director for the Center for Campus Organizing in Boston. "We're trying to lay the groundwork for this larger task." The center links individual campus groups together in an attempt to create a national network, and thus a national agenda for progressive politics. "You never know if any of these projects are going to click, where the idea of student activism begins to catch on like it did in the '60s" Flacks says. "People are out there trying to educate and get students to play that kind of role. There is more of this than there was 20 years ago." Larson sees student activism picking up at Kent State. "I've noticed that people have kind of been opening their eyes more," she says. "I've seen a change on this campus in the last two years even. More and more people are getting involved. I am just really pleased with that. People are starting to see that the American dream isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's limited to only a certain type of person." |
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