USA TODAY International Edition
Is this a golden age of college student activism?
Analysts say yes, with opposition to Trump motivating many
Activism on college campuses is, of course, nothing new.
In the late 1940s, post- World War II activism started as veterans began attending college on the GI Bill and students pushed for more control over their education.
By the 1960s, students protested the war in Vietnam and agitated for civil rights. And in the late 1960s and early 1970s, students began pushing for more economic access to higher education.
Today, activism on college campuses is growing.
According to Angus Johnston, a history professor at the City University of New York who studies student activism, campuses around the country are seeing a rise in student- involved activism.
“All of the evidence suggests that we’re seeing a lot more activism and organizing protests on campuses, especially in the last 10 years,” Johnston said. “In the last two to four years, we’ve seen protests on campuses where there haven’t been in a very long time; we’ve seen marches and rallies at traditional activist campuses drawing in a lot more students than they have in the past.”
According to a UCLA study published in 2016, 1 in 10 students expects to be involved in some kind of protest during college — the highest the annual survey has recorded since it began in 1967.
“There really is a sea change happening now where activism is becoming central to the college experience for a lot of students in way that it hasn’t been in quite a long time,” Johnston said.
In the last few years, student debt, anti- racial violence and universities’ handling of sexual violence on campuses have been the biggest issues student activists are tackling, Johnston said.
And in the past few months, he said, schools are “seeing a new wave in organizing, which has a lot to do with the current administration in Washington.”
“They’re really concerned about white nationalism on campus; they’re really concerned about the rise of xenophobia — a long list of issues,” Johnston said. “So the current anti- Trump organizing is really building on the or- ganizing that’s been going on for the last decade.”
At Kent State in Ohio, which gained fame for student activism during the Vietnam War, students are taking a stand against sexual assault.
In January 2016, the university’s Students Against Sexual Assault organization began examining how Kent State’s definition of consent compares to the definitions at other universities, as well as how policy affects student culture and the process of dealing with sexual assault, said Cole Wojdacz, the group’s vice president. The group proposed policy changes to administrators, and a new version is in the works.
Recently at University of California- Berkeley, student activists and others protested a scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart News senior editor. UC Berkeley sophomore Kate Lee said she hadn’t been involved in activism, but in the current political climate, she’s starting to change her mind.
“There is no place for hatred or discrimination in this country — whether it’s Muslims, immigrants, refugees, those who are racially different than we are — and it’s now our job as students to start making that known,” she said. “I think I know now that this won’t be the last time I protest something like this.”