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you know the student activism is something that is really taking off in
the past year especially with the occupied movement and the new york times
did a really great job at focusing on occupy colleges
and seeing where that movement has gone absence it began earlier last year and
what they found out was you know a few these movements are tapering off a
little bit and part of the reason could be because a lot of campuses have uh...
stopped allowing the students to camp
on campus
uh... men also a lot of students and that i can definitely agree with this a
lot of students want instant gratification yeah
right and it's a very interesting phenomenon amongst uh... this new
generation people who want instant gratification their impatient and if
they don't get what they want immediately either get really angry or
they just give up so you know of
or both exactly
soapy without occupied colleges movement you're seeing a lot of students kind of
giving up
getting frustrated because they're not getting that instant gratification
however date are still trying to
you know mobilize other students continue the student activism and also
keep in mind that for the first time ever at their is at the student movement
that doesn't just focus on one thing and one thing only there are several
different issues that they're all trying to tackle at the same time so just to
give you an example from this new york times article at tufts students have
used at the attention garnered by appetite to advance a decade-long place
burnett african american studies by afrikaner
uh... studies program
uh... at occupy uh... idaho state university students are condemning
idaho's high foreclosure rate from a handful of up pup tents
as well as more wind resistant cardboard boxes at you know a traditional fear
school for investment banks in hedge funds
students noisily protest in a morgan stanley information says session in the
fall so you're saying all of these activists you know tackling all these
different issues of the same time and it's really fascinating because it's
something that the movement gets criticized for but i don't necessarily
think it's a bad thing it's definitely a strength and weakness uh... i mean it's
hard to get the media to really focus on you and it's not one issue
uh... and this is the new york times article talks about the previous team
activism based on like nukes in the seventies apartheid contras in the
eighties in sweatshops in the nineties where was focused on one issue it's easy
to at the media behind you but probably harder to get other students i mean when
you can come at them with a bunch of different issues they might be for us to
do with it's easier to get
uh... people to join up
uh... but uh... both as a result of reading this article and also you're
looking at the the coverage in in we've gone through it to you we've been pretty
attached to the the occupy students movement since the beginning easily get
news about them
i don't see see both reasons for
uh...
optimism and pessimism obviously it's winter you know they're talking about
when resistant cardboard boxes but
even as political as i am personally if i was in college right now i don't know
how long to get me to camp out
you know on the lawn uh... so i definitely
i love the scenes they are still doing this but it is winter it's been months
that they've been doing this so
you know it might be hard to keep it going
uh... but one thing that i think should lead to some optimism is the fact that
we are gonna election year in old at the population is inherently more political
right now you know they're seeing these debates all the time they're gonna have
the republicans and democrats coming out with their educational plans the next
four years in if anything is going to galvanize more student involvement in
the site i think that could be a maximally any notice going back to what
you said about stands camping out in the winter time
i don't even think that it's necessarily ineffective strategy for them to do the
camping because you know
or what's happening with the occupied movement in general not just occupy
colleges
day party have been evicted from you know all of these different campsites
and as a result they're trying to find other strategies to get their messages
across so what are they doing they're going to different ad campaign sites for
different politicians that they don't agree with ok you're seeing rakes and
torrent bingo letter bombs by occupy protesters and it's something that gets
a message across it something begets media coverage and it shows anarchy pi
isn't going anywhere anytime soon and i love that selena camping out in the park
ok you do get a message across you didn't manage to change
and the discourse in the country
we've gotta find better strategies to uh... shown
what your activism is all about and what kind of acecomm topics are trying to
tackle yet so i'd honestly of of all the things that have led to some popular
opposition to the occupied movement it is the campaign like people
have a problem with seeing that we had on
in yukon missus during the time of with iraq war we had tent city
which was people camped out in opposition to it it's very easy to hate
the hippies camping out on your lawn it's harder to be opposed to when they
come out with a particular thing that they want to do they want to be all set
up a new department or they want to do something about student debts easy to
get behind that
early and you know at u_c_ riverside recently there were student protests
about tuition hikes
and i love that
you know as soon as there's something that the students disagree with i think
they should be outspoken about it and you know it's kind of like is something
has
awoke in the students up because based if they've been shaken out of their
complacency
and it's important for them to continue that so i i i i love that this new
version is inactive ism is developing any continue that in just a real fast at
one of the things that i think is of most positive about the second if the
movement does continue on throughout this year and possibly longer is that
people's political behavior later in life it is really strongly correlated
with
how active they were you know really run not just in their own behavior but you
know being exposed the parents of a politics in voting and stuff like that
so if we had a lot of students across the country doing this you know these
outreach in these campaigns now with this goes on for a few years you might
have a significantly more political
twenties and thirties