It is a source of never-ending consolation that whenever I need proof of my own vast ignorance and extremely finite powers of imagination, I can think back to Columbia and 1968—for example, I have no idea what to call whatever it is that happened—protest? Demonstration? Uprising? Revolt? Occupation?

I also have no idea whether or not the students’ demands for amnesty—the primary reason why the building occupations dragged on for a week—were an attempt to legitimize their right to protest or an attempt to cover their asses, or what it must have been like in the occupied buildings where, according to one account, up to eight enthralling hours a day were spent in meetings. According to one protester, “A lot of it was political education, a lot of it was just bullshit, a lot of it was worrying about what we’d do when the police came.”

Fortunately the upcoming four-day conference/reunion will undoubtedly cover everything in exhaustive detail, such as the sign addressed to the women occupying Fayerweather—“You are in a liberated area. You are urged to reject the traditional role of housekeeper unless, of course, you feel this is the role that allows for creative expression”—or the on-campus performance by the Grateful Dead, “an acid-rock band,” as a Spectator reporter helpfully pointed out.

But of course everything at the conference will be a story—more specifically, a story four decades removed from the actual event, which was spun from the very beginning either as an “unmitigated disaster” or something that brought the University “almost into the 20th century,” depending on whom you ask. Clearly ’68 is now less a historical event than a myth that has been retold over and over again.

The first anniversary went more or less unnoticed—in large part because the ’68 moment had not yet passed. Demonstrations, building occupations, student strikes, etc. were still regular occurrences—so much so that the University eventually took out a temporary restraining order against certain students. Thankfully it did not name anyone in my favorite organization, the Pacifist Anarchist Bisexual Psychedelic Conspiracy, which, as one might deduce, was formed to protest protesting, and which threatened to “dump ... [Columbia] into the East River” unless its demands—part of an “overall program culminating with the destruction of evil”—were met.

But by 1970, although the University was still in a state of disorder almost impossible to fathom today, Spectator was decrying the “low level of political activity on campus.” Perhaps this coincides with the fact that heroin use was so widespread that the CC dean felt obliged to deem it “intolerable” and hinted that he might have to involve the police (read: in addition to the undercover cops already on campus). In any event ,1970 brings the first commemoration of the 1968 revolt—a simple photo and caption.
In 1978, many ’68 veterans returned—including Mark Rudd, the former president of Students for a Democratic Society and chief ringleader, who had recently surrendered to the FBI after years on the run—and marched to the president’s house to protest the University’s investment in corporations supporting the pro-apartheid regime of South Africa. But at the 1978 Commencement, when enterprising Spec staffers tried to sell a collection of its ’68 coverage, buyers were “relatively scarce,” even with the price at $1.

The 20th anniversary received much more fanfare, with retrospectives and reunions (with name tags that indicated what building people had occupied). But, as history professor and ’68-era graduate student Eric Foner told the New York Times, “This is not The Big Chill,” referring to the nostalgia-heavy film of yuppie hand-wringing. “These people are still committed. The impulse didn’t end. It just scattered.” According to a Times Magazine piece that pronounced Columbia “recovered” from the disastrous effects of the revolt—as well as other factors (University financial issues, the general decline of New York in the ’70s) for which the protesters can probably not be held accountable—by 1988 the political situation on college campuses had shifted; professors were now more liberal than students.

But even after nearly eight years of Ronald Reagan, the protest was not wholly embraced. Many former protesters, reviewing the University 20 years later, claimed to find no evidence that ’68 had even happened. In a 1988 retrospective, Jerry Avorn, a former Spec reporter and the chief author of Up Against the Ivy Wall, a thorough examination of the revolt, recalled a meeting with a Columbia undergraduate who had read his book for a class—Avorn was pleased until he learned that the class was “The History of Childhood.”

Still, Avorn, like virtually everyone else who wrote or spoke to Spec or the Times, remained optimistic for the ’90s. Yet in the ’90s there was virtually nothing in the Times, and Spec offered little more than chronologies. My assumption is that in 1993 people had hope for Bill Clinton’s first term and that in 1998 they wanted nothing to do with anything remotely related to the ’60s (or Monica Lewinsky).

Already this year the Times has run three articles, all of which make the obvious point that protesters of today are not like the protesters of yore. I will make my own obvious point—unpopular wars, disillusionment with the federal government, and University expansion into the neighborhood are all conducive to nostalgia. But perhaps the only lesson is the one we all already know: the protesters were neither as heroic nor as villainous as they have been presented—but a handful of people can effect change, positively or otherwise.

Robert Ast is a student in the school of General Studies studying English and comparative literature. Columbia Babylon runs alternate Thursdays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com