A New Student Left?

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from Dissent magazine:



A New Student Left?
Kevin Mattson - May 4, 2012 1:00 pm


I guess it’s easy for those on the left to get excited by the recent Occupy protests. When the hell was the last time that May Day earned publicity in America? Most Americans probably don’t even know the damn history of the holiday. We’re more used to soggy potato salad at Labor Day picnics, if anything at all connected to the long history of union struggles in this country. So now the smoke clears from the feisty protest marches and restated alliances between certain elements of the labor movement and the Occupy Wall Street activists. I was no witness to those actions. I happen to occupy (literally) Ohio. I am far from Cleveland, where the recent terror wing of the anarchist movement got busted for dreaming up schemes to blow up a bridge (or so it’s reported). I am no big city boy but rather live in Appalachian Ohio, far from the sensational news cycles.

But let me offer a small story out of my own small world that I think suggests another place to build some confidence about the future possibilities of the Left in our times of austerity and constriction. This is not the story of the Occupy movement. It’s a story about a small number of college students. It’s a story about an immediate loss that still offers some reason for hope, if we understand it right.

Over the last few months, a small group of student activists protested a 3.5 percent tuition increase at Ohio University (where I teach). This was an increase that fell on the heels of previous tuition jack-ups. The students replicated the feel and imagery of New Left campus protesters from some fifty years ago. Their posters always showed an iconic raised and clenched fist. They called for sit-ins in the central administrative building. They demanded students join them via chalk-drawn commands on sidewalks. When none of this seemed to do much, they decided to occupy the trustee meeting where the up-or-down vote on the tuition rise would take place.

They were silent at the meeting and simply held up signs. According to the local student newspaper, two signs read: “With the amount of debt I will have it will not be financially responsible of me to have children” and “I make $98.18 a week, look me in the face and tell me that I can afford $10,215 for tuition.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=751

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