Many people have come to the conclusion that student activism is not, in fact, dead, but has rather changed forms. Gone are the sitÐins, rallies, riots, and other forms of activism associated with the turbulent 1960s. In their place, people claim, has slowly emerged a more intellectual form of activism, including student forums, meetings between students and administrations, and other "more civilized" means of protest. This type of activism, they maintain, is more successful because it stresses discussion rather than confrontation, and does not alienate those in power the way, for instance, taking over a building would.
To be blunt, these people are wrong. Student activism today is either dead or severely comatose. The businesslike armchair intellectualizing that today's "activists" are attempting to pass off as activism has simply not been successful. As much as it sickens me to write about the Code for the "pith time, let's take that as one example. After much discussion and trying to appeal to the administration's intellect, a group of students last year organized a march, rally, and sitÐin at the Fleming Administration Building in opposition to this flatÐout illegal policy. About 200 people showed up that day. The U-M Board of Regents got the message - sort of. They did not do away with the Code entirely, but ordered that a new one be written up.
What if 2000 showed up? This university has 36,000 students; if only two out of every thirtyÐsix had cared enough to take a couple of hours out of their day and voice their opposition, we might not have had a code at all. Instead, the "new and improved" code is essentially the same as the first - and, say many experts, even worse. If more people showed up that day to protest, the Regents would have acted accordingly. Instead, their gesture for a new code was nothing more than a smokescreen to keep the Code while appeasing what they saw as just a few loud troublemakers that interrupted their precious trains of thought.
What if there was no protest at all? The answer to that is quite obvious. All the begging, debating, and editorializing in the world - which, in fact, was going on for quite some time - amounted to jack squat. It is clear that something drastic had to be done to wake up the administration.
So, how bad do things have to get before students realize that our problems cannot be wished or ignored away. And yes, the Code, the stillÐeffective Diag policy, and the redundant Alcohol Policy, just to name a few issues, are indeed problems. True, not very many people are affected directly, but how many have to be before students wake up and act - if not out of a desire to do for others, then at least to potentially save their own asses? I'm not calling for another Kent State tragedy or another 1968 Democratic Convention. Just a little more involvement, okay?