Powerful cause could move students to protest again
By Beckie Strum
May 3, 2010
The drafting of soldiers to fight in Vietnam brought the hollowing
pain of death and loss of brothers, friends and classmates to
thousands of Syracuse University students in 1970.
"You picked them up and you took them!Ó said Robert McClure, a young
professor at the time of the protests, recounting the anger students
felt toward the draft.
"To get widespread social protest, the pain has to be meaningful and
deep and widespread. And these were students all across the country,
and the issues involved were all across the country, and the protests
were all across the country - real demonstrable pain," he said.
Forty years ago this pain led to nationwide protests across college
campuses, sometimes leading to deadly altercations between protesters
and authorities. Although the United States is fighting two wars
today, mass demonstrations against the war are absent from college
campuses, partly because there is no draft. But students' access to
instant communication makes the potential for demonstration greater.
"There was a vigorous, bitter divide in the general electorate over
civil rights to start with and then the war, which was based on a
draft that ended up touching the lives of millions," said McClure, a
political science professor.
The Vietnam War, which resulted in the death of approximately 60,000
American soldiers, was much more intrusive and significant in the
lives of most college students than today's wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which are fought by a volunteer army, McClure said.
McClure cited a piece of public opinion research that concluded the
public's opposition to war is directly correlated to the number of
dead soldiers. Accordingly, student opposition to the war has been
limited given the much smaller number of deaths in today's wars, he
said. Combined casualties for Iraq and Afghanistan stood at 5,442 as
of April 30, in comparison to the 60,000 American deaths during
Vietnam, according to the U.S. Defense Department's website.
Student protests of the scale and intensity of those in 1970 are
likely to occur only if students feel the same intensity of pain from
something, he said.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, director of the Middle Eastern studies
department, was outspoken against the invasion of Iraq, holding
forums in 2002 and 2003 to discuss the reasons and implications for
going to war. The student activism was nowhere close to the activism
of 1970, he said.
Students participated in several local protests alongside Syracuse
residents in 2002 and 2003. Participation at these protests never
involved more than 70 SU students, according to articles from The
Daily Orange.
The lack of activism against the war in Iraq was the result of a
widespread sense of helplessness and frustration still present in
America after Sept. 11, Boroujerdi said.
"This was a country that was feeling some existential angst as a
result of terrorism," he said. "I think there was a sense of
complacency, a feeling this was going to happen no matter what."
By 2003 the war in Afghanistan had also been more successful than
anticipated, so students and the general public assumed Iraq would
play out in the same manner, quickly and with few casualties, Boroujerdi said.
But the relatively small amount of student activism in response to
the invasion of Iraq does not reflect a permanent decrease in
activism on university campuses, he said. Boroujerdi pointed to the
protests in Iran last summer as examples of how educated youth
continue to rally in enormous groups when they are angry and
disenfranchised from the government.
"Campuses still happen to be the hotbeds of protest in other regions,
and it's natural. You have a numerical concentration of people, and
you have intellectual concentration," he said.
The charismatic leadership of SU students, such as David Ifshin,
student body president and the leader of the Vietnam protests at SU,
might be present in today's student body, said Larry Elin, a
professor of television, radio and film. But students today have not
taken up a cause to rally around in numbers comparable to 1970.
Ifshin's daughter, Chloe Ifshin, a junior television, radio and film
major at SU, grew up hearing about her father's devotion to ending
the war in Vietnam. Ifshin died of cancer in 1996. Chloe said she
wished she had lived in an era when she could fight for something
greater than herself.
"I'm passionate about the environment and about human rights. But
there's a difference between knowledge and action," Chloe said. "I
think what could make me get up is if something was directly going to
impact my little world, which is kind of sad. I don't think I could
have fought for other people the way my dad did. Those were his
friends being drafted. Those were his frat brothers."
Chloe said she thinks the relationship between her and her parents'
generations also makes today's students less active because
protesting and social movements were always something she associated
with their past and not her own life.
"We think of our parents' generation of being really revolutionary
and active," she said. "These movements are something we associate
with our parents. It's not as much of a rebellious act for us. It
applies to feminism as well. People fought for it, and we think of it
as a personal choice not to continue fighting - but it's really apathy."
Chloe used the protests against this year's commencement speaker,
Jamie Dimon, to demonstrate how students will protest only if the
issue is something they can actually change.
"There was a definitive goal, 'We want a different commencement
speaker,' and that was appealing to people," she said. "If we don't
feel we're capable of change, then we don't try."
Elin pointed to a major difference between American society of 1970
and of today. There was a vast generational gap between students of
the 1970s and their parents, a divide that is not as apparent today,
Elin said.
The students protesting the war did not see the justification for
bombing and invading an impoverished, small Southeast Asian country,
Elin said. Students were looking critically at the beliefs of
American policy the generation before them had taken for granted.
"We thought we could see the evildoings of our own country in a way
that the older generation couldn't or refused to see," Elin said.
Were SU students to take up a cause en masse, the potential for quick
and enormous gatherings would vastly expand due to the advent of
social media and cell phones. Students today have a greater ability
to form movements than students did in the 1970s, Elin said. Now is a
greater time than ever to form youth movements around the world, he said.
Elin, a freshman at SU during the Vietnam protests, said simply being
around people who were involved was infectious.
"I was as dumb as a brick when I got here as to what was out there
in the world," Elin said. "Then I was just being bombarded with these
new stimuli, people and ideas."
Although social media provides the space and method for communication
between protesters, Student Association President Jon Barnhart said
he does not think a Facebook group or event page is an effective
method for inciting outrage or passion. He referenced the quick
response of students on Facebook to the cancellation of MayFest in
October, which had 5,000 members in 24 hours, he said.
"Seeing someone else's energy is what builds your own," Barnhart
said. "It's very difficult to get excited over a Facebook group."
Although SA led many of the student protests during the 1970s,
Barnhart said it would take many students from a very diverse set of
backgrounds coming to him about an issue for SA to lead something as
serious as a student protest.
But Barnhart believes there are a lot of issues that need to be
addressed through activism, such as race relations, women's rights
and the new immigration bill passed in Arizona that makes it legal
for police to check the papers of anyone who looks like an illegal
immigrant, he said.
"In a lot of ways I feel we've backtracked," he said. "We need to
make sure these rights are here to stay and they're progressing. But
what do we have showing we support them - a Facebook group?"
In spite of this, the Syracuse campus continues to be a significant
source of civic activism in more discreet ways.
Pam Heintz, the associate vice president for engagement and director
of the Center for Public and Community Service, oversees much of the
student volunteerism on campus.
The number of students volunteering for academic causes around SU was
about 7,000 last year, and the number of community co-curricular
services was 2,500, totaling 9,500, Heintz said. The number of hours
put into community service totaled approximately 700,000, she said.
"The students we see are very committed to the work they're doing
and I believe, for many of them, this is their way of making the
world a better place," she said. "And I believe that for some
students, depending on what the next big issue is, (they) will find
themselves becoming activists."
This generation of college students has shown the most sustained
commitment to stay active in volunteer work, Heintz said. She also
thinks students today are more aware of the social injustices, having
grown up with the legacy of movements like civil rights, women's
rights and the Vietnam protests, she said.
Ultimately, McClure said, students today and the students 40 years
ago are more similar than they are different. Young people will
always be the most passionate about whatever cause or direction
society is taking at the moment, he said, because they have no memory
of issues before then.
"So could it happen here that students would become organized and
active?" he said. "Of course. No one would have likely predicted in
1960 that students would close the campus down in 1970. It's the good
and scary part of college students. They're just sitting around
waiting for a good cause to raise hell about, if the right conditions
present themselves."
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