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Activism a tough sell on today’s college campuses
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SAN JOSE, Calif.–No draft. No time. And no war – at
least not yet.
These are explanations students give for why a possible U.S. war
with Iraq has not sparked campus protests on a Vietnam-era
scale.
Activists had some success this week: Tens of thousands of
students at more than 300 colleges and universities had pledged to
join a national student walkout, according to organizers for the
National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, the event coordinator.
They hope the walkout will ignite an emerging anti-war movement on
campus.
But student organizers face a formidable task. In contrast to
their counterparts who challenged the Vietnam War, today’s
college students have far less appetite for politics, national
surveys show. They’ve grown up in a more conservative time,
not during the political, social and cultural revolution the
‘60s and early ‘70s represented.
Today’s anti-war organizers have some advantages, though.
Even before the bombing has started, they have mobilized large
numbers of students to rallies in Washington, New York and San
Francisco, folding them into a broader peace coalition. Now those
students are taking what they’ve learned back to their
campuses.
“The Internet and e-mail have totally changed the face of
organizing,” said University of California junior Michael
Smith, 23, of the campus-based Berkeley Stop the War Coalition.
“This permanent infrastructure has arisen to work on peace
and justice issues full time. That’s their job. There is not
as much need for student leadership.”
College tuition increases and budget cuts across the nation are
providing a hook. Activists make a link between economic problems
on campus and the war.
“It makes the war more relevant,” said Adam Welch,
an activist at De Anza College in Cupertino. The governor’s
proposed budget cuts “are like a war on us. It’s not
just us attacking those people over there. We feel personally
affected by it.”
Still, campus organizers concede that getting students engaged
politically is tough.
“They don’t think there’s a direct connection
to their lives,” said Huong Nguyen, a member of Students for
Justice at De Anza.
At community colleges and large, urban campuses such as San Jose
and San Francisco State universities, students tend to be older,
commute to campus and work at least part time. Many have spouses
and children competing for their time. They have few opportunities
to form connections on campus.
Today’s students are a product of their time: They are
markedly more concerned about being well off than developing a
meaningful philosophy of life, something that ranked high with
students in 1967. A higher percentage support increased military
spending than they did 25 years ago. And fewer students now say
they are liberal politically.
These national attitude shifts are tracked by an annual freshman
survey – 282,549 students responded last year –
administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at
University of California-Los Angeles for nearly 40 years. One of
the biggest swings over the years has been student attitudes about
political affairs. In 1966, more than 60 percent of freshmen said
it was “essential” or “very important” to
keep up. Last year, only about 33 percent felt that way.
Students “feel distrustful and cynical about political
leaders in general,” said Anne Colby, a senior scholar at the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Menlo Park
and co-author of a new book, “Educating Citizens,” on
what colleges and universities can do to foster civic
participation.
“They do not feel capable of making a contribution in what
feels like a complex and overwhelming world,” Colby
said.
Becky Bartindale, Knight Ridder Newspapers