The Active Voice

At a Students Against Sweatshops meeting one February evening, Jessica Rutter describes a recent protest she attended in Los Angeles with other Duke students to fight the retailer Gap's alleged use of sweatshop labor.

In addition to SAS, Rutter, a junior, divides her time among many different liberal organizations on campus--Students Against the War in Iraq, DukeDivest, the Rural Health Coalition, Break for a Change, Hiwar and the Women's Studies Dormitory.

"I think activism is a really broad term, and there are a lot of different ways that you can be active," Rutter says. "People who are doing education, people who are protesting, people who are organizing their own communities--I consider that activism."

On the other side of the political spectrum, Bill English, president of the Duke Conservative Union, says people who lean to the right can be considered activists as well.

"I'm a student activist," English says. "Some people think it's odd that you have conservative activists because the term 'conservative' itself sounds like you default to the status quo.... An activist is someone who looks at the way things are and not only sees serious problems but works in a significant way to change them."

In 1998, Mother Jones magazine ranked Duke the top activist school in the nation, citing SAS' involvement with the University's merchandise licensing policy. But five years later, how active are students on this campus now?

It is a chilly Monday night in February on the Chapel Quadrangle. As the Channel 5 news truck drives away, all is quiet in "Peaceville." Among the few dilapidated tents and painted signs protesting a war on Iraq, one student strums his guitar while other residents huddle in scattered groups in subdued conversation, bundled in jackets, hats and gloves to fight the cold.

About one-third of a mile away, the highly populated town of Krzyzewskiville is also settling down. K-ville's sprawling village, compared to the fewer than 10 tents that composed Peaceville, may be evidence of the changing nature of student activism--or, many would say, the lack thereof.

This January, students organized the second annual commemoration of the Allen Building takeover. Returning to the lock-in, Goodwin says he was pleased. "It was delightful to see such interesting conversations going on in an event where I remember nothing but shouting before," he says.

Munger had a different reaction. "There is so little activism of the kind there was before," he says. "The Allen Building lock-in... was in some ways almost a caricature of activism because it was to memorialize activism."

Rather than taking over the administration building in protest, organizers invited everyone inside in a gesture of solidarity. "That's fine, but it's the opposite of activism in a way," Munger says. "It's to make activism more traditional, but activism by its very nature is radical and confrontational."

Whether Duke students today are less active or are simply exercising alternative methods of activism seems debatable.

"Now I'm struck by how reasonable and productive conversation is," Goodwin says. "I don't know what that says about activism, but I like it much better now."

Today's student activists are much more open to discussion, he thinks.

"You can have a serious discussion of the issues, whereas in those days it was largely adhering to pre-fixed positions, often determined off campus. Some organizer in Los Angeles had reached a position, and students just repeated it."

The conversation may be more productive, but Munger has found less of it.

"One of the reasons that the administration doesn't have trouble dealing with activism is because there isn't any," he says. "I have in my classes tried to get arguments started about the war, I don't care which side they're on, and students won't say anything."

Student leaders trace that dwindling discussion to the belief that Duke students really just don't care. Rutter and English may disagree fundamentally on almost everything else, but both mention lack of student interest as the largest impediment to organizing.

"The biggest challenge on Duke's campus is apathy," English says. "It's very hard to get people motivated to do anything, particularly if it's not within the general social structure of the school."

Munger proposes his own theory.

"It's not that [students] don't care, it's just that they're not sure," he says. "They're far less active, but the issues are far more difficult to define."

Munger and Goodwin posit the events occurring 30 years ago made the era more conducive to fostering activism. For example, students had to worry about themselves or their classmates going to war in Vietnam. Now, without the draft, that fear has been allayed.

"The guys were all terrified of getting drafted," Goodwin says. "When you debated the war in those days, it had much more significance than when you're debating the war now, because [today] you have a bunch of hired guys who are going to fight it for you."

Munger calls the '60s and '70s "unique in American history," adding that Vietnam was just one of many rallying points for protest.

"The combination of civil rights, the draft and sexual liberation was a unique confluence of events," he says. "It's not that activism has declined, it's that there was a bubble in activism and it went away with a return to normalcy."

He adds, though, that activism was still higher in the '80s than today, particularly during the movement to divest from South Africa.

Although Duke may not be the most active community today, Rutter says she has found a small group of supporters.

"I wouldn't say that I consider Duke a friendly place for activism," she says. "The thing that I like about Duke's activism is that it's within a small community of people that I really respect... but in general I feel like most Duke students look down upon activism.... I think there's also this idea that there's just a very small group of students who are screaming into the abyss."

In addition to facing apathy from the rest of the student body, Rutter and English have also experienced stereotyping as a reaction to their activism.

"Certainly, I'd say part of what feeds the apathy of the mainline here is the ability to stereotype activists, whether it be progressive or conservative, saying 'I'm just a moderate. Activists are nutty extremists. That's not for me,'" English says.

Rutter, a columnist for The Chronicle last semester, recalls being approached one day by a student who asked for her name. When she told him, he said that he had read her column and that he hated her.

"Being an activist on this campus, people know your name," Rutter says. "They don't know anything about you, they just know your name and what they read in The Chronicle. That sucks."

English, a current Chronicle columnist, says the DCU does not come across as a stereotypically activist organization, preferring alternative methods instead of pickets and marches.

"That's really not our flavor of activism," he says. "Part of our claim to activism is that we've tried to change what it means to be an activist, at least traditionally on college campuses.... Shouting people down is really just power, whereas actually engaging them in a conversation is more productive."

The DCU tries to foster that conversation through Chronicle columns or open letters to the community, its speakers program and its conservative magazine, New Sense.

Whereas the DCU seeks to educate the public by reaching outside the organization, Rutter says the activist groups with which she is involved operate through "educating people and bringing them in."

"I feel personally and organizationally that I have gotten a lot of people interested in these [issues]," she says. "What I consider effective activism is what's going on in the internal dynamics of the group. Is it democratic? Is it efficient? Are people really passionate?"

English also wonders about the general question of political enthusiasm. "It's healthy in some respects that we don't have the student body en masse storming the Allen Building anymore," he says. "But it's often frustrating when there are very important issues at hand, and no one seems to be paying any attention. You wonder what people are here at college to do and why these things don't interest them."

At Duke, political apathy becomes even more pointed in contrast to the mass of Cameron Crazies who traditionally have demonstrated tireless fervor for the Blue Devils. If the old argument against political activism is that one person cannot make a difference, why do athletic events inspire so many individuals to action?

Munger suggests that it may be as much for the impact on the individual participant as for an attempt to determine the final outcome. "People want to be there because they want to participate in the game," he says.

In the same way, Peaceville's purpose was not necessarily to effect change on a global scale, Rutter explains, but to make a statement in the minds of individuals. "As for ending the war, ending sweatshops, ending poverty, I don't necessarily know if there are kinds of activism that would do that," she says. "It's more just movements, processes."

Still, student activism has made its mark on Duke, especially in interacting with the administration. Now, students are sitting on many important administrative committees and even on the Board of Trustees--an opportunity not available to them until 1972.

To Rutter, the administration supports the idea of activism, although some officials who are affected by the protests she leads may not agree with the specific stances her organizations take.

"I get Christmas cards from the head of licensing, saying, 'Thanks for your work on labor issues,'" she says. "I'm not sure if it's condescending, or if they're somewhat on our side but they're forced into certain positions because they are administrators."

Instead of going to Franklin Street with other college students last Halloween, Rutter and others dressed up as pickles and went trick-or-treating at Keohane's house to encourage her to place pressure on the Mount Olive Pickle Company.

"I got a letter from her in the mail, thanking us for doing it, which was kind of ironic, considering that we were targeting her to change a decision, and she was like, 'Thanks, that was really creative and loving,'" Rutter said.

However, not all issues have been supported by the administration. For example, Rutter says Keohane seems to be standing firmly against the movement to divest from Israel.

"I think the administration is just as unwilling to comply with activist demands as in the '60s," Rutter says, "But the outward attitude is 'We love activists, they make our campus alive.'"

Although English's relationship with the administration has not been as close, he has few complaints.

"[Keohane] certainly influences the campus in directions that we've preferred not to see it go," English says, "[But] we've been very free to operate as we please and choose."

For example, when the DCU sponsored David Horowitz--who placed a controversial anti-slavery reparations advertisement in The Chronicle in 2001--to speak on campus last year, Keohane defended his right to speak, English says, although she disagreed with his ideas.

Despite encountering some apathy and antipathy from the student body and occasional run-ins with the administration, student activists believe their causes are well worth it.

Having worked with the DCU for three years, English is still amazed by the large membership and national attention the group has received. "I didn't expect for us to have had as big of an impact as we've had in the last few years," he says. "A big part of the unacknowledged [benefit of] activism on campus [is]... providing a group to say, 'Look, these views aren't crazy; look, you're not alone if you think this.'"

Munger agrees the experience of activism can be valuable in and of itself. "You shouldn't let school get in the way of your education," he says, recalling the sight of Peaceville in front of the Chapel. "I think a lot of people thought, 'Boy, it's great that someone is showing some sort of activism or a political sensibility rather than just going to class.'"