What is it about some college students that so naturally inclines them to tantrum-throwing?
As you may have heard, the University of California Board of Regents voted Nov. 19 to increase student fees by 32 percent, about $2,500, in the face of an at least $535 million budget shortfall for the 2009-2010 school year. Both in anticipation of and in response to the decision, students at several UC campuses organized massive demonstrations and sit-ins, committing various acts of trespassing and other outright disorderly, sometimes violent conduct in the process. All in the name of maintaining the right to state-subsidized tuition.
The protests capture an increasingly evident culture of entitlement afflicting our generation’s self-styled “activists.” Worse yet, this culture is reflected in a tendency among youth to caricature the positions of those they disagree with to suit their narcissistic need for self-righteousness.
Now, it is fine for students—or anyone else, for that matter—to peacefully express their views within their right to freedom of speech. Amidst the recent protests, many did. This, however, does not entail that protestors are entitled to get what they want. This is apparently where the disconnect occurs—students seem to think they deserve a free lunch. Who cares how it gets to them.
Some facts are in order: The state of California is facing a $7 to $8 billion dollar budget shortfall for the 2010-2011 fiscal year, and as part of state-wide belt-tightening, has had to cut funding for state higher education by $637 million for the 2009-2010 school year. Keep in mind that 58 percent of the per-student cost of education is paid for by taxpayers as a whole, who by and large do not have children in the UC system. What makes students think they are entitled to this subsidy as a birthright?
At the end of the day, recessions are painful and budgets have to be balanced. As far as I can tell, demonstrators have presented no alternatives. The protests, characteristically, seem more cathartic than constructive. Luckily for them, they don’t have to make the decisions about what services have to be cut or how additional funds will be raised. Administrators, who don’t have that luxury, are faced with bad options and worse options.
Perhaps we could overlook the happenings in California of the past two weeks if they were an anomaly. But they are not. Look to the “Take Back NYU” shenanigans of last February at New York University, where a group of radical student activists blockaded a school cafeteria in a campus building and effectively shut down operations there, threatening that they would not leave until their demands were met.
The irony here is that the “Take Back NYU” protestors received none of their demands. Before the stark fiscal reality the UC system faces, it seems unlikely that any of the student demonstrators will have their demands heard either.
What, then, is the point of such highly visible collective action? It seems often little more than thoughtless chest-thumping, performative rather than purposeful. The words of one UC demonstrator were telling: “We’re here because it’s empowering for students.”
But what exactly is so empowering? That students can throw a tantrum, scream, yell and get away with it? One would think maturity is part of what students should hope to gain via their college education. And a crucial part of maturity is being able to recognize that things are not as simple as we would often like them to be. If anything, the recent resurgence in the culture of protest seems to disregard that notion, privileging instead the infantile idea that complexity is subservient to the need to be heard, ill-thought out though the expressed views might be.
Closer to home, we can be grateful that the student response to the much-publicized International House-Multicultural Center merger was tame and controlled by comparison. Details of the issue aside, the primary student organizers were respectful to administrators, and more importantly, began with a clear set of goals that they were able to raise in a generally constructive manner, recognizing the difficulties involved.
Senior Priyanka Chaurasia, outgoing president of the Center for Race Relations, explained that the efforts she and other organizers made were “marked by being strategic and thinking carefully about the best way to get the desired result…. most of the activism has been diplomacy first.”
To be sure, there are aspects of the MCC-IH merger discussion that could have gone better. Numerous students reported that the manner in which views were sometimes expressed discouraged disagreement. Efforts at campus discussion should promote thoughtful dialogue, and that involves creating space for disagreement.
Still, it has been said that Duke lacks an active culture of “activism.” Too often, we do not stop to consider what the term means. If the past few weeks’ events at UC campuses are what “activism” looks like, then Duke can do without it.
Vikram Srinivasan is a Trinity senior. This is his last column of the semester.
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