{"id":10573,"date":"2015-05-26T14:59:29","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T14:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/?p=10573"},"modified":"2015-05-26T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T14:59:29","slug":"the-renaissance-of-student-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/the-renaissance-of-student-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Renaissance of Student Activism"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>\u201cThere has been a real powerful sense &#8230; that the future they were promised has been taken away from them.\u201d<\/h2>\n<p><strong>2015\/5\/21-<\/strong>Maybe the campus protests seemed rather isolated at first. Dissatisfaction with the administration. Outrage over bad decisions. A student altercation gone bad.<\/p>\n<p>For example: The protest at Florida State University last fall, when students didn\u2019t like the idea of having the Republican state politician John Thrasher as their school\u2019s president and launched a campaign\u2014#SlashThrasher\u2014against his candidacy. Citing the lawmaker\u2019s corporate ties, various groups staged demonstrations, including some who\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/miamiherald.typepad.com\/nakedpolitics\/2014\/11\/fsu-student-group-to-protest-thrasher-presidency.html\">organized a march<\/a>\u00a0to the city center.<\/p>\n<p>Or the protest at the University of Michigan in September, when, amid frustrations over their football team\u2019s losses, students\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/onlyagame.wbur.org\/2014\/10\/01\/michigan-shane-morris-head-injury\">rallied at the home<\/a>\u00a0of the school\u2019s president to demand that he fire the athletic director. They had more on their minds than lost points: The director had neglected to remove the team\u2019s quarterback from a football game after he suffered a serious head injury that was<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/collegefootball\/writer\/jon-solomon\/24731510\/michigan-ad-apologizes-says-shane-morris-has-a-concussion\">later diagnosed as a concussion<\/a>. (The Florida students\u2019 protest failed to change minds at FSU, but Michigan\u2019s athletic director was quickly sent packing.)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cI\u2019m proud of our history. I\u2019m not proud of Dave Brandon being a part of that history.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/JDLSWXM7YE\">pic.twitter.com\/JDLSWXM7YE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ace Anbender (@AceAnbender) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AceAnbender\/status\/517082555682914304\">September 30, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<section id=\"article-section-1\">There was the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/swarthmorephoenix.com\/2014\/09\/25\/bryn-mawr-campus-roiled-by-confederate-flag-mason-dixon-line-in-dormitory\/\">confederate-flag fiasco<\/a>\u00a0at Bryn Mawr, which resulted in a mass demonstration by hundreds of students who, all dressed in black, called for an end to racism on the Pennsylvania campus. A week later, more than 350 students<a href=\"http:\/\/college.usatoday.com\/2014\/09\/24\/colgate-university-students-ask-canyouhearusnow\/\">staged a similar protest<\/a>\u00a0further north, at New York\u2019s Colgate University. That one\u2014dubbed #CanYouHearUsNow\u2014likewise aimed to to end bigotry among students and faculty; it was in part prompted by a series of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/09\/24\/colgate-university-protest-racist-yik-yak_n_5875106.html\">racist Yik Yak posts<\/a>.<\/section>\n<div><\/div>\n<section id=\"article-section-2\">Just as has been happening in communities at large, campus protests against racism and bigotry\u2014along with related types of discrimination\u2014have become commonplace. Students at the University of Chicago hosted a<a href=\"http:\/\/feministing.com\/2014\/11\/19\/uchicago-students-speak-out-against-institutional-failures-with-trending-liabilityofthemind-hashtag\/\">#LiabilityoftheMind social-media campaign<\/a>\u00a0last November to raise awareness about institutional intolerance. A \u201cHands Up Don\u2019t Shoot\u201d walkout was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.seattletimes.com\/today\/2014\/11\/demonstrators-plan-march-at-noon\/\">staged the same month by hundreds of Seattle high-schoolers<\/a>. Roughly 600 Tufts students\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/tuftsdaily.com\/news\/2014\/12\/08\/tufts-students-lead-indictamerica-protest\/\">lay down in the middle of traffic<\/a>\u00a0in December for four and a half hours\u2014the amount of time Michael Brown\u2019s body was left in the street after behind shot. Students at numerous other colleges did the same.<\/p>\n<aside>The \u201cbelief that you can change the world [hasn\u2019t been] beaten out of you yet.\u201d<\/aside>\n<p>Of course, there were other common themes, too. Early last fall, Emma Sulkowicz, then a student at Columbia,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bustle.com\/articles\/38346-columbia-student-emma-sulkowiczs-mattress-performancecarry-that-weight-performance-art-piece-tackles-campus-sexual-assault-culture\">pledged<\/a>\u00a0to carry a mattress on campus daily to protest the school\u2019s refusal to expel her alleged rapist. Soon, hundreds of her classmates\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bustle.com\/articles\/38346-columbia-student-emma-sulkowiczs-mattress-performancecarry-that-weight-performance-art-piece-tackles-campus-sexual-assault-culture\">joined<\/a>\u00a0her, as did those at 130 other college campuses nationwide, according to reports. Anti-rape demonstrations became a frequent occurrence as colleges across the country came under scrutiny for their handling of campus sexual-assault cases. There were walkouts and sit-ins,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/claremontindependent.com\/george-will-uninvited-from-scripps-college\/\">canceled speeches<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lubbockonline.com\/education\/2014-10-01\/tech-protesters-denounce-rape-culture-phi-delta-theta-incident%23.VInnOUtKm2x\">banner campaigns<\/a>. Last May, the U.S. Department of Education reported that it was investigating 55 colleges and universities for possible violations of Title IX. As of this January, the number had\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/251988486\/List-of-94-Postsecondary-Institutions-That-Have-Pending-Title-IX-Sexual-Violence-Investigations\">gone up to 94<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sulkowicz even carried her mattress\u2014with the help of two classmates\u2014across stage to get her diploma on Tuesday:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Sejal_Singh_\">@Sejal_Singh_<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ZoeRidolfiStarr\">@ZoeRidolfiStarr<\/a> &amp; 2 others helped Emma Sulkowicz carry her mattress across stage at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ccclassday2015?src=hash\">#ccclassday2015<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/pEOqQviD0N\">pic.twitter.com\/pEOqQviD0N<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Teo Armus (@teoarmus) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/teoarmus\/status\/600693444764372992\">May 19, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<section id=\"article-section-2\">These demonstrations were, and are, very far from isolated. \u201cThere\u2019s a renaissance of political activism going on, and it exists on every major campus,\u201d Harold Levy, a former chancellor of New York City\u2019s public schools who now oversees the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, recently told me. Levy attributed this resurgence in part to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/03\/growing-up-alone\/388129\/\">growing inequality in educational opportunity<\/a>\u00a0in the country, which has contributed to great tensions between institutions and the public they\u2019re supposed to serve; even protests that don\u2019t explicitly focus on this cause, he said, are byproducts of this friction.<em>It\u2019s happening again\u2014it\u2019s like when we were here! It\u2019s happening!<\/em>\u00a0Levy, 61, was quoting a recent remark made by a friend who\u2019s a trustee at Cornell, Levy\u2019s alma mater. \u201cHe\u2019s in a position of authority now, and he didn\u2019t know whether to celebrate it or to worry about it,\u201d Levy said. \u201cAnd of course the answer is both: You want kids to be politically active precisely because you want their engagement in the world, and you want to encourage them to be free thinkers.\u201d But that activism also threatens the institutions\u2019 control.<\/section>\n<section id=\"article-section-3\">This resurgence in campus activism necessarily a new phenomenon. After all,<em>The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>wrote about \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/01\/22\/education\/edlife\/the-new-student-activism.html?_r=0\">The New Student Activism<\/a>\u201d back in 2012, attributing the trend to the Occupy Movement. But observers say the activism that\u2019s since proliferated has a different feel, and this new chapter could trigger significant shifts in the way things are run.<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/d\/embed?mid=zsBkjp9Dx1wQ.klMKyER71QNE\" height=\"480\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<section id=\"article-section-3\">At least 160 student protests took place in the U.S. over the course of the 2014 fall semester alone, according Angus Johnston, a history professor at the City University of New York who specializes in student activism. \u201cThere\u2019s certainly something of a movement moment happening right now,\u201d he said, pointing in part to the news media, which fuels activism by putting protests on the public\u2019s radar. \u201cThe campus environment right now has, for the past couple of years, reminded me a lot of the early- to mid-60s moment, where there was a lot of stuff happening, a lot of energy\u2014but also a tremendous amount of disillusionment and frustration with the way that things were going in the country as a whole and on the campuses themselves.\u201d And this sentiment has been taking hold in other parts of the world, too: Thousands of students (and teachers) have been demonstrating in Chile this month in the name of education reform, including two students\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2015\/05\/deaths-chile-student-protests-150515121655496.html\">who were killed<\/a>\u00a0last week.For younger generations, Johnston added, the \u201cbelief that you can change the world [hasn\u2019t been] beaten out of you yet.\u201dJohnston runs a blog-ish website featuring a resource that\u2019s oddly hard to find on the Internet today:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/studentactivism.net\/2014\/12\/04\/american-student-protest-timeline-2014-15\/\">a modern timeline\u00a0<\/a>of student protests, including color-coded maps illustrating the location and theme of these demonstrations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the map (which has yet to be updated with data from the spring semester) reveals that most of the recent student uprisings during the fall of 2014 focused on racism and police violence, all but a few of them in the eastern half of the country. Many of these demonstrations used hashtags to mobilize, some of which are still in use today. Meanwhile, according to Johnston\u2019s analysis, about half of the 160 protests were evenly split between two main themes: sexism\/sexual assault and university governance\/student rights. The remainder called for improvements to tuition and funding\u2014about half of them at University of California schools.<\/p>\n<aside>\u201cOne of the thing that ties (the campus movements) all together is a sense that the future doesn\u2019t look as rosy as it might have a few years ago.\u201d<\/aside>\n<p>But they don\u2019t always have to do with issues specific to students. Just take the divestment campaigns, which are becoming\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/04\/the-push-for-ethical-investment-at-americas-colleges\/391697\/\">a popular form of political activism<\/a>at college campuses across the country, including Harvard, Boston University, and Princeton. These efforts are aimed at convincing university administrations to drop their investments in controversial industries (such as guns or fossil fuels) or corporations (such as those that side with Israel) and have little to do with on-campus issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of the protests \u2026 embrace national issues through the lens of campus policies,\u201d Johnston said. \u201cThe university is big enough to matter but small enough to have an influence on. It becomes a site of organizing because there are opportunities to organize on campus that a lot of times you don\u2019t have in an off-campus community.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<section id=\"article-section-4\">Young Americans are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.robinscharf.me\/apathy-irony-and-cynicism-american-millennial-angst\/\">often characterized<\/a>\u00a0as politically apathetic and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/daily-number\/politically-apathetic-millennials\/\">ignorant<\/a>. It\u2019s true that they vote at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/itsallpolitics\/2014\/10\/08\/354187589\/millennial-voters-are-paying-attention-so-why-don-t-more-actually-vote\">exceptionally low rates<\/a>, but some say that\u2019s because they\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/sponsored\/allstate\/when-it-comes-to-politics-do-millennials-care-about-anything\/255\/\">don\u2019t believe<\/a>\u00a0going to the polls makes much of a difference. Perhaps they see activism as a more effective means of inciting change\u2014particularly when the change they seek has little to do with politics. Just last week, the entire graduate class of 2016 at the University of Southern California\u2019s art and design simply school dropped out of the program in protest of faculty and curriculum changes.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Entire Class Of USC MFA Art Students Dropped Out Over &#8216;Unethical Treatment&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/wWlgfd1miS\">http:\/\/t.co\/wWlgfd1miS<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/h4uGskMh4Q\">pic.twitter.com\/h4uGskMh4Q<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 LAist (@LAist) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LAist\/status\/599416520112869376\">May 16, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sometimes students demonstrate precisely because\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/03\/why-do-american-students-have-so-little-power\/387634\/\">they\u00a0<em>don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0have political power<\/a>. A group of Kentucky teens recently spent months campaigning for a state bill that would\u2019ve given them the opportunity to have a say in the selection of district superintendents. The high-schoolers testified before lawmakers, wrote op-eds, consulted attorneys, and collected piles of research. The legislature didn\u2019t pass\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrc.ky.gov\/record\/15RS\/hb236.htm\">the bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, despite the uptick in activism, those in power\u2014from lawmakers to school administrators\u2014don\u2019t appear to be any more sympathetic student activists. Though graduate-student employees across the country have for years\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/04\/graduate-students-of-the-world-unite\/390261\/\">struggled to unionize<\/a>\u00a0in pursuit of tuition relief and better wages, for example, only a number of groups have succeeded in that effort.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps school officials are even less sympathetic now than in the past. According to Johnston, as Occupy spread, student activists were faced with increasingly violent punishment. One of the most egregious examples involved the University of California, Davis, in 2011, when a campus police officer, with the backing of his superiors,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/local\/education\/la-me-ln-uc-pepper-spray-20140821-story.html\">pepper-sprayed a group of seated students<\/a>\u00a0involved in an Occupy protest. Though that\u2019s an extreme example, Johnson added, \u201cwe are seeing a less transparent, less responsive, less democratic university than we\u2019ve seen in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside>\u201cThe university is big enough to matter but small enough to have an influence on. It becomes a site of organizing because there are opportunities to organize on campus that a lot of times you don\u2019t have in an off-campus community.\u201d<\/aside>\n<p>Recently, a group of students at Tufts\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/article\/The-History-Health\/230011\/\">refused to eat<\/a>\u00a0for five days\u2014more than 120 hours\u2014in protest of the administration\u2019s decision to lay off 20 janitors. For health and safety reasons, the students ended the hunger strike ended without arriving at a deal with the administration. But students have continued to rally, including at Sunday\u2019s commencement:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MonacoAnthony\">@MonacoAnthony<\/a> speaks again and signs go back up <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/vlhUTNVcHy\">pic.twitter.com\/vlhUTNVcHy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Nick Pfosi (@npfosi) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/npfosi\/status\/599949347472670720\">May 17, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And earlier this semester, the University of California, Santa Cruz\u2014a school founded during the civil-rights movement that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ucsc.edu\/whorulesamerica\/santacruz\/progressive_politics.html\">still markets itself<\/a>\u00a0as a mecca of radical politics\u2014delivered\u00a0one-and-a-half year suspensions to\u00a0a group of students<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/05\/the-betrayal-of-student-activism\/392759\/\">who blocked a major highway in protest of tuition hikes<\/a>. (The students each\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.santacruzsentinel.com\/general-news\/20150507\/uc-santa-cruz-highway-protesters-plead-no-contest\">face sentences\u00a0<\/a>of 30 days in jail and restitution, too.) Critics accused the school of capitulating to community members, who were furious over the gridlock caused by the protesters.\u00a0Undergraduate tuition at UC schools\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ucop.edu\/operating-budget\/_files\/fees\/documents\/history_fees.pdf\">has more than doubled<\/a>\u00a0in the last decade to its current level of $12,192\u2014increasing at an even higher rate than has the national average.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere has been a real powerful sense among a lot of student activists that the future they were promised has been taken away from them,\u201d Johnston said. \u201cOne of the thing that ties (the campus movements) all together is a sense that the future doesn\u2019t look as rosy as it might have a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/05\/the-renaissance-of-student-activism\/393749\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/education\/archive\/2015\/05\/the-renaissance-of-student-activism\/393749\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alia Wong<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere has been a real powerful sense &#8230; that the future they were promised has been taken away from them.\u201d 2015\/5\/21-Maybe the campus protests seemed rather isolated at first. Dissatisfaction with the administration. Outrage over bad decisions. A student altercation &#8230;..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,44,7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-history","category-latest-news","category-news-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10577,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10573\/revisions\/10577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naacpms.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}