Dark times for the ivory tower

Solidarity is good medicine for dark times. When, in 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed four student protestors at Kent State University, the response from college students across the country sent a powerful message. In what became known as the Student Strike of 1970, more than four million students brought hundreds of educational institutions to a halt with their protests. A student at New York University hung one telling sign during the protests: “They Can’t Kill Us All.”

Students today, too, live in troubled times. It may be that student frustration sometimes expresses itself in nebulous and inarticulate forms, like the Occupy movements on college campuses across the United States. But these movements, even at their most unintelligible, have something to offer. For instance, for its supposed indeterminacy, the Occupy movement increasingly highlights the high cost of attending college and the weight of student debt.

The right response to these movements is never violence. But violence is exactly what has happened. From coast to coast, university officials and police forces have forcibly shut down interrogative student voices, misguidedly focusing their anger on people and not on problems. We offer a brief chronology of this condemnable violence:

Nov. 9, police officers at the University of California at Berkeley used batons and riot gear to disperse a group of non-violent student protestors. In later protests at Berkeley, police did not even spare Robert Hass, the former United States poet laureate, the business end of the baton.

Nov. 21, public safety officers at the City University of New York used batons, muscle and handcuffs to end a student protest against planned tuition increases for the 2012-2013 academic year. Fifteen student protestors were arrested, and several were reportedly knocked down or left bleeding by the public safety officers.

And Nov. 18, in what has become the paradigmatic example of violence against students, police officers at the University of California at Davis treated submissive and defenseless student protesters to liberal blasts of pepper spray. Videos of this incident have gone viral, and they are disturbing. At least two victims were hospitalized, and one student reportedly coughed blood for 45 minutes after having pepper spray forced into his throat. Even more chillingly, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who ordered the police to remove the students, defended the police’s actions. We echo students and commentators before us in calling for her swift resignation.

Who can blame students for being frustrated about rising tuition costs? The annual cost of attending college has risen three times faster than inflation since the late 1970s; more than $600 billion in college debt floats around on balance books in the United States. What’s worse, is that there seems to be no end in sight. Even at Duke—which has raised its tuition a steady 4 percent for the last several years—talk about controlling tuition rates is more rhetorical smoke than proposal for systematic change.

By using force to quell protests which are, fundamentally, discursive, university administrators have only fanned the flames of a narrative of administrative neglect. The right response to student frustration is not to punch up students­—it is to address their frustrations.