General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhere are the college students?
In the 60's and 70's there was clearly a lot of activism and social consciousness on the campuses. Have I missed any protests or demonstrations at the colleges and universities. Do today's students care less about our country and the society in which we live?
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)msongs
(67,442 posts)working summer jobs to pay for the tuition and future debt.
Those Millennial "too busy playing with their electronic people substitutes" not only know that their future is precarious, they know that the only control they have is that which they can make, in part by making whatever money they can by working with their computers, and using them to form networks online to fight the breitbarts. They also know that SOME people will gladly see them drown because they make a fine scapegoat for why 2016 went down the way it did; in other words, they know that if they show up at these rallies they can expect to be yelled at and ordered about by the same "geniuses" that have been crashing the boat for ten years, who cannot stop comparing themselves favorably to those yucky millennials, who gladly DEMONIZED them in 2016.
To quote one of the best Baby Boomer poets, David Bowie "these children that you spit on, are quite aware of what they are going through."
CentralMass
(15,265 posts)Igel
(35,359 posts)Lots of studies and graphs showing what the FRED-based graphs at the bottom of The Atlantic article show.
Then the Atlantic comes around with another non-sequitur: Yes, having a job is good, but high-school completion and college-attendance are better. As though they're mutually exclusive. Presented with a false choice we tend to say that it's good that kids aren't getting jobs. That's unclear. Low-SES kids often over-do it. Then again, they're also less likely to finish HS or go to college. Some of them drop out just to work minimum wage "like my daddy." It's not as clear-cut as The Atlantic makes it out to be, but for that you'd have to split apart the data. Then it wouldn't keep up the Atlantic's editorial opinion, so it's not okay to point out.
crazycatlady
(4,492 posts)I'm employing quite a few college kids right now. However, for everyone that I employ, 3 turn the job away.
(I'm running a paid canvassing operation for a campaign)>
snooper2
(30,151 posts)These people actually exist, you may have to interact with them one day
Bet you can't get through the whole thing
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Much like posting on a message board...
GaYellowDawg
(4,449 posts)Because it's either working like dogs, or get mired in crushing student loan debt. Sometimes it's both.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Codeine
(25,586 posts)isn't always street demonstrations and sit-ins? Technology changes everything, even the nature of political protest.
Brother Buzz
(36,466 posts)Selective Service.
Today, they are just as disenfranchised as their parents, trying to make the nut and stay afloat.
Kyblue1
(216 posts)As was being sacrificed in a pointless war in Vietnam
Brother Buzz
(36,466 posts)This present crop of college kids saw NOTHING come of all the protests they grew up watching. That being said, they are choosing to exercise their activism through those social media thingies instead.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)...the Vietnam War draft.
Only rich punk cowards like Trump or psycho child molesters like Ted Nugent could dodge the draft with impunity.
They knew their number was coming up soon.
Kyblue1
(216 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)They sure were brave with other peoples lives huh?
Orrex
(63,224 posts)Never miss an opportunity to mock him for deliberately shitting his pants in his cowardly bid to avoid serving the country he later pretended to love.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)They are are all yellow cowards, traitors, anti-freedom nazis in my book.
Orrex
(63,224 posts)NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)I'm surprised we aren't seeing larger marches but they have been pretty regular. All across the country. I see a lot of young faces at them.
Orrex
(63,224 posts)And honestly, who can blame them?
They didn't fuck up the country--why should we expect or require them to be the vanguard in the fight to fix it?
Kyblue1
(216 posts)For good government,for the people, not the corporations and their puppet politicians. We should demand a better society. It is clear that the Rethugs and their wealthy backers are on the verge after trying for over 70 years, of destroying the New Deal as well as the civil rights movement.
FM123
(10,054 posts)Like a lot of this generation, much of what we don't see happens online. And we don't actually see much of the local college protests and marches featured in the press these days since the "big ones" like the Women's March, Tax Day March, etc. get so much news coverage. But I still see a lot of young faces wearing pink hats out there with us. Kinda nice to see them with us since once upon a time they couldn't trust anyone "over thirty".
politicat
(9,808 posts)They are doing digital activism, raising funds, and working. Besides, when we protest and the right wing throws the first punch, the liberal kids are the ones who get blamed for being violent and told they're doin' it rong.
In the 60s and 70s, a kid could go to college and support herself for one year on less than one year's full time minimum wage, (about 700 hours) and those jobs existed. A kid who saved her summer job money as a sophomore through senior was good to go for at least two years. Her parents could prefund college by saving 1% of their weekly income per child from age 10 to 18. Now, a year of tuition costs more than 1500 minimum wage hours, not including housing and food and books, and to prefund college means starting before birth and hoping you don't have a disaster.
The Boomers were very, very, very lucky, and started disassembling the ladder as soon as they started getting into office in the late 1970s and 1980s. I attended the schools the Boomers refused to fund because it would make their property taxes go up a couple of bucks and have only studied at and worked in the universities ever strapped for cash because our elders didn't want any more of that rebellion. I was not old enough to vote until the mid 1990s. The damage was done by my predecessors and we've been fighting a rear guard action ever since.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)kids and how they worked to pay for college, I remind them that in 1976 you had to work 1/5th as long at a minimum wage job to pay for tuition than you do today.
Next argument is the universities spend too much money. I respond that you should expect around $20K/yr to be spent on students. My daughter attends a private hospital affiliated college. They have very little overhead (just the instructional buildings which are smaller than most high school campuses). The staff is paid under the market for Masters and Doctorate Nursing professionals. They point to the "luxury" items like climbing walls, but seriously how much do those really cost.
politicat
(9,808 posts)Now, to be clear: our single biggest annual operating expense is labor, always labor. And we can divide that out into two broad categories: people who are on tenure salary whose contracts were written before about 1989, and people who are not. The first category is about 25% of the labor force, and uses about 55% of the labor budget. Their contracts specified that they would remain at their salary after retirement until they chose to stop taking a section or a research project, even if they'd reached retirement age and begun drawing their pension. So that's a cost that we're all eating, and it's hurting the instructional model. But it is a limited problem -- those contracts have not been written since 1989, and those still under those contracts are retiring and dying. The newer tenure contracts are much less generous. We'll never see their type of tenure again, and that hurts academia at large, but the damage is done. Seriously, watch the annual budgets -- capital investment is usually no more than 25% of an annual budget, and even that is rare.
As for features: We've been rebuilding student housing because the newest of the old stuff was built in the 1950s and 1960s, and has reached end of useful life -- asbestos, lead paint, failing wiring, dodgy plumbing, failing roofs and foundations, you name it. It would cost more to repair, maintain and bring up to ADA and building code than it costs to rebuild, and we get more living space for the buck. Those buildings got thrown up in a hurry to provide for returning GIs and then their children. We no longer offer 2-4 person bunk rooms with shared bathrooms at the end of the hall. We build 2-4 person pod apartments with individual bathrooms shared by no more than 2 people. The first reason is purely public health -- when an oral-fecal route virus gets into shared housing, shared bathrooms make it an epidemic. (Think cruise ship.) The old scheme averaged 3-6 days per semester of sick time. Private baths cut that to 1-2. Shared housing is a Petri dish for nasty viral outbreaks. Less sick time means more instructional time and everyone's happier if they're not walking into pools of sick at 5 am. We get a lot of parents and community members kvetching about spoiling these kids, but we, as staff and faculty, don't want to get sick, either.
The second reason is longevity. We're not actually adding more toilets per floor, or more shower spaces per floor, but it does take more piping. A shared space is going to get hit with the tragedy of the commons -- everyone has incentive to use it, nobody has incentive to maintain it, so we have to hire people to clean the bathrooms. That's $50K a year in labor costs per three floors, at minimum. A shared space is more prone to leaks, floods, and clogs, too, and leaks cause structural damage that costs more to repair. We can inspect and repair annually each 2 person bathroom for a far lower cost than keeping a shower room intact and clean. And a 2 person bathroom gets less disgusting, even if neither person is especially tidy, because it has more time to dry between uses. And for everyone's peace of mind -- a 2 person shared bath generates 2% of the interpersonal conflict that a 12 person shared bath generates. Same with a 4 person kitchen and living room versus a floor common room.
We also aim at one person per 8'x10' room. Our students are adults. They have every right to have a safe, quiet, private retreat that is theirs alone. They study better if they can close a door. They're more emotionally healthy, and thus more productive, if they have a door. And if they use that space to introduce their pink parts to other pink parts, that's nobody's business but theirs. We also find that having private spaces means less binge drinking, and thus less sexual assault and less bullying. Being trapped in a cage means people search for oblivion. We try to minimize that need.
We also encourage them to choose their own food. While we still have some food halls, we also install a microwave, a small sink, a small dishwasher, a 2/3 burner induction cooktop and a refrigerator in each pod, and they can use their meal service credits at the local grocery (and at multiple restaurants). And not a company store grocer, it's the same one I shop at, for the same prices. Inductions are safer -- it's really hard to start a grease fire or heat-fire on an induction because there's no heat, and they're much easier to clean since they're sealed burner stovetops. They're allowed breadmakers, blenders and similar small appliances that don't pose a fire risk. There's an enormous amount of food waste in a cafeteria setting, and it drives up our labor costs. If we can keep those costs down, we keep tuition and housing costs down, and it's much easier to set aside some halal pods, kosher pods, peanut-free pods, gluten-free pods, and vegetarian/vegan pods than hope that food service for 40,000 manages to get it right every single meal. Also, yeah, we do use granite countertops -- granite lasts for 75 years with minimal upkeep. Formica costs half as much and has to be replaced every 5 years under communal use. We build for decades and centuries, not years. We use industrial rated tile in the bathrooms, too -- costs 150% more at installation, but lasts 10 times longer than fiberglass or plastic inserts.
Now. Climbing walls, exercise facilities, pools. Yeah? So? A climbing wall is about a $10K investment that lasts 15 years, which among 40K students a year, is not expensive at all (about 2 cents per student per year). We'd rather our students were climbing there than going out into our local foothills and getting hurt without support. They can climb year round, and it's great full-body exercise. Same with the treadmills, bicycles, and weights in the student gym. We have pools, because we've had them for a while, we have an internationally ranked swim team, and again, it's good exercise. We want our students healthy, and that means exercise. For the most part, the decisions to buy rest with the students, who have a council, a budget and some decision-making role. (They've also got intramural Quidditch teams, and the normal sports, and dance spaces. Again, we want them active, but we want them active with less risk. We'd rather they were dancing in the dark dance gym on Friday nights than at a frat-house basement rave.) We provide bus passes because we don't have room for parking. Our eventual goal is to get every undergraduate into housing. (We have graduate housing, too.) Right now, we've got space for just under half of them, and the private market housing ranges from pits of hell to adequate. But what we provide is cheaper, cleaner, safer, and more efficient.
We are a huge campus, a small town in our own right, but a small town that provides almost full care for a group that's generally between 18 and 25. We have health services, mental health services, campus-wide wifi. All of these services would be necessary for any community of 40K. Everything serves the productivity and well-being of our students. I don't think our model works well for a 2000 person campus, or a 500 person campus, but they're villages compared to us. It's all about the scale of the model.
To compare, I live in a 25K small town that's about 10 miles from my uni. My city also has a pair of pools, three gymnasiums, a library, three grocery stores, an urgent care and a hospital, and on a patch of ground far less efficiently used. All of the services my town provides, my university must also provide, plus. We have to think of universities as small towns, not elementary schools.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)I especially like the idea of dorm students being able to cook their own food. That was the big complaint I had with my daughter's dorm experience given how much was charged per meal. The university did help out by not enforcing the meal plan rules that closely. At the end of the semester we would get a bunch of take out sub meals for the whole family using up the credits she had. They also allowed guests beyond the "guest" credit in the dining hall. I daughter eats like a bird. The rest of family definitely doesn't
Hekate
(90,823 posts)...and the thought and planning for now and the future.
The bathrooms alone are worthy of a Public Health treatise. A friend of mine went to State College in the mid-1960s, and told me the men's dorm was so unsanitary that they not only had an outbreak of strep throat but an outbreak of a social disease. Bleah.
Anyway, carry on with your good work!
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,438 posts)less" is a little insulting.
Response to Kyblue1 (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Nevernose
(13,081 posts)In the 60s and 70s, college was much, much cheaper.
Kyblue1
(216 posts)How about a movement to run out of office all elected officials who oppose affordable education for all. Our choice: education, social programs and healthcare for all our citizens OR tax breaks for the wealthy and more weaponry for the military to fight illegal wars.
Hekate
(90,823 posts)Certainly some are activists -- we have a saying in our house when young people come knocking at the front door: "If it's spring, it must be CALPIRG."
Doreen
(11,686 posts)when they are no longer able to finish college because it will become much to expensive and assistance is getting lower or non existent. Very soon only the very rich kids will be going to college.
Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)We are in Ohio which is somewhat depressed in terms of jobs. She got a good entry level job and is working. She won't protest (did go to Woman's march though and some protests at Portman's office but she has to be careful) for fear of getting arrested and having a record which would end her chances of economic success...times are different. The 60's kids unless they blew stuff up or went to Kent State...did not face consequences for all that protesting...kids now do. Look at what happened to Occupy people...some who went to jail. Look at what happened to the protesters who came to Trump's shitty inauguration....also ending up in jail.
Doreen
(11,686 posts)freedom of speech. Our young people are going to suffer the most because speaking out for their future is becoming against the law.
Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)Response to Kyblue1 (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Kyblue1
(216 posts)Not enough exposure of what issues concern the younger generation, i.e. education costs, lack of good jobs. The clown circus that the Trump regime is has deflected any focus on real issues that affect us. As an older citizen I want to be inspired and encouraged that the younger generation is not satisfied with the current state of our government. I want to see that there is hope for the future. Bernie Sanders did appeal to a younger crowd but, unfortunately, that was considered by some as a negative. I hesitate to use the words hope and change since the right wingers (Palin) ridiculed Obama for suggesting the ideas.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)The draft took all able bodied young men and used them as fodder for their war. Some privileged ones such as Trump, Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh and others were able to defer their draft or get parental help in avoiding it.
Trump was busy fighting his war by fucking around so much that he had to worry about STDs. That's what he says.
It's not the same thing now. Yet college students do protest by the way, but they're ignored by the media.
Taking summer classes. Doing unpaid internships to further their career prospects. Wondering how they will ever pay off their student loans.
AmandaRuth
(3,105 posts)are involved in the anti fas movement.
Warpy
(111,351 posts)or spending their time trying to find work, any work, trying to keep the student loan burden down as much as they can.
Back in the 60s and early 70s, it was a completely different country. The 1% hadn't grabbed it all and working people were paid enough to live on, send their kids to school, and save for retirement. The kids were supposed to spend their time studying, but had extra time for activism.
Not so today. Those activist kids are now parents who aren't paid well enough to send their kids to school or save for anything.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)redstatebluegirl
(12,265 posts)This group of young people truly believe the system is rigged and doesn't work for them. They don't see that they have a voice. They LOVED Bernie because he promised them things he knew he could not deliver but would invigorate that group. They are rightly terrified of the future, they can't find good jobs that will help them pay of the huge student loans they have.
With that said, they also feel entitled to something they haven't yet earned. Not all of them, but many of them. They sit back and bash Baby Boomers while doing the same things they are accusing us of.
Do they march, yes the ones I know did march in the Science march, the Women's march. Some went to protest Trump when he was sworn in. But even among those, are some who told me when Bernie was not the nominee of the party they chose not to vote at all or voted green.
Very complicated group of people, not unlike us at that age.
JI7
(89,271 posts)As others have said the draft was a huge reason for protests.
Nictuku
(3,617 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)ileus
(15,396 posts)pnwmom
(108,995 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Many think Hillary and the Republicans are the same. That's the politically active ones. A lot of them are more interested in having fun.
Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)the candidates who ran have shot at the presidency in 20.
Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)Last edited Mon Jul 10, 2017, 08:38 AM - Edit history (1)
obamanut2012
(26,142 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)I don't know what you are saying.
What are your thoughts on college student activism in politics?
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Another unsupported series of allegations. Cute... like wee bumper-stickers.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)You are correct, they are unsupported "bumper sticker" type generalizations in response to a pretty general question.
Seemed like college students who were politically active were passionate about Bernie, and it seemed like they were pretty upset when he didn't get the nomination, so that was my thought process there.
Definitely just a quick, surface-level response, based on nothing but general impressions.
I'd be curious to get your deeper insights into the question, if you'd like to share.
Demsrule86
(68,689 posts)time in American history...and judging what happened after the protests and how many of those who protested are now Republicans it seems rather futile. It did end the war which was good and help with civil rights-also good. I can not understand people who wrap themselves in the past...not meaning to offend you. I would also say that generation was one of the most privileged in history and did not have the problems today's young people face.
FSogol
(45,527 posts)Pat yourself on the back!
obamanut2012
(26,142 posts)To help pay for their expenses, and to help them get scholarships. Tuition is no longer free or very low cost.
I work with these kids, and the amount of hours they work is insane: jobs, classes, classwork, internships, more jobs. They are always exhausted.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)johnp3907
(3,733 posts)I work at a small college, and even on our little rural campus I see a lot of very involved young people. Lots of campus organizations. Not a lot of burning down the armory, or other stuff that would make the news.
CanonRay
(14,118 posts)MineralMan
(146,331 posts)I remember the 60s and 70s very well. I was in college then. Most students were doing exactly what college students today are doing. Some were politically active, but it was a small percentage of students then, as it is now. I was in that small percentage. Most were studying, partying, working part-time, trying to find partners to canoodle with, skipping classes, sweating over exams, maintaining their student deferments, and other similar non-political activities.
Few were out marching and organizing. I know that, because I was doing that and couldn't understand why more of my peers were not. We cannot blame the current political situation on college students. It's a far bigger problem than that.
Blaming groups doesn't help. Encouraging them helps. If you were around in the 60s and 70s and were politically active, you'll recognize that what I said in the first paragraph is correct. If you weren't, then you have no idea.
lostnfound
(16,191 posts)FOX has effectively programmed their viewers to despise protestors as a knee jerk default reaction.
Lack of empathy has become the norm, even a badge of honor, among much of the GOP base. In weighing humanity vs party, party loyalty matters more to them.
I don't mean this defines them in their family or community, but their political thoughts have been redirected towards instant hate. Even parents who speak up in the ehalthcare debate because of very sick children get told that a bullet would solve the problem or that they should shut up and deal with the problem by themselves. (Jimmy Fallon, for example).