Activism

blahIn a year whose first enduring image was of the frenzied protests surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s September visit to Columbia, student activism has played a large and multifaceted role. From marches to campaign trips and from division to unity, students’ “extracurricular activities” set the tone for a whole campus.

Spec Opinion continues to examine the role of student activism at Columbia. This is part two of a three-part series on student activism.

When a student was raped in '86, we tried to speak out at a vigil, but our voices were inarticulate. Since then, several significant steps have been taken to combat sexual abuse here—increased security guards at the gates, much more campus housing, and the indispensable expertise from agencies such as Barnard’s Rape Crisis Center.

A great debate continues to be waged over the legacy of the ’60s. Bitter neoconservatives talk as if the barbarians have captured the academy and pharisaical liberal critics dismiss these events as the narcissistic yearnings of a spoiled generation. Those of us who participated in those events have a profoundly different view.

In the 2005 opening credo of AdHoc Magazine, Alex Jung (CC ’07) and I hearkened back to 1968. It was a clichéd reference and, in retrospect, not very applicable. Our project, to found Columbia’s first progressive magazine, was far removed—in content but especially in form—from the activism of that era.

Three components—the inferiority complex, the revolutionary complex, and the bureaucratic complex—play a dominant role in explaining the culture of Columbia as we know it today. Think of all the phenomena that can be explained as a product of one of these or of the interaction of two or more of these, or in the case of numerous protests, all three.

As the 40th anniversary of the April 1968 protests approaches, alumni and administrators are collaborating to organize a three-day event to commemorate and promote intergenerational dialogue on the historic episode that shook Columbia University and the nation.

If you’re a liberal arts student, chances are you should probably stop reading this column and get back to writing the papers that should, by all rights, be the bread, butter, and unrelenting curse of your education thus far.

The critics of the recent hunger strike are quick to decry the privilege of the strikers and their supporters. This privilege is represented in various ways, ranging from an absurdly inaccurate portrayal of the strikers as rich and spoiled to an important recognition of their position as students at an elite American university. I write to contest the argument that the privileges of the students and the University delegitimize the past and future actions of students at Columbia.

Protesters rebuffed an attempt by administrators to reach out to the hunger strikers Monday night as the demonstrations closed in on the end of their first week.