I read in the news, local news:
More than 100 University of Oregon students pushed administrators and the Board of Trustees toward radical climate action and divestment in companies that support Israel during a rally Tuesday and public comments.
Who led the effort?
The rally was a joint effort organized by UO Climate Justice League and UO Students for Justice in Palestine (SPJ).
Climate and Palestine?
"We came together, also understanding that our issues are intrinsically linked," Bentz said. "Palestinian justice, and climate justice are the same issue. The same players control the outcomes, the Board of Trustees being one of them."
Worthy effort, right?
But also pointless. Won’t get a damn thing done.
Re-read the numbers: More than 100 students. Hundred. In a university where more than 23,000 students enroll. 100 out of 23,000. Not even a half percent of the number of students enrolled showed up to protest at the trustees meeting.
Oh, btw, the university’s student newspaper described the crowd a little differently. You will be able to spot the difference right away: “Roughly 150 UO students and community members attended a rally in front of the Ford Alumni Center before the Board of Trustees meeting.”
There were members of the community also in the crowd!
How many students, in contrast, show up for basketball games and football and softball and soccer and, heck, even lacrosse? Multiples of 100. A hundred many, many times over.
You think the trustees would care about a few students? I assume they patiently nodded their heads, at best, while a few students addressed them. Maybe a couple of trustees doodled to distract themselves. And then business resumed after the students were “heard.”
In fact, where were the university students when the community gathered and then marched in order to bring attention to climate change and the science of it?
It was into the former president’s disastrous term in the White House when protests were held all across the country to bring political attention to the pressing issue of climate change. Remember the rapist threatened to pull the US out of the Paris Accord on climate change, and then he did?
Very few young people were in the march. We were a bunch of geezers and a few kids.
The march route went past quite a few apartment buildings where university students were partying. Yes, partying. At one yard, it was one heck of an intense beer pong tourney, it looked like. A couple of students at another apartment even waved out to us from a balcony where they were partying. They waved out to us!
Here we were, middle aged and older, marching to make the world a better place for young people, but the youth didn't care enough to come out and protest!
Beer, sex, ball games, and Instagram beat climate change protests!
If that's how it is here in liberal, progressive, and green Oregon, then should we be surprised that the US has not done any damn thing about climate change? Palestinians, who?
I was a college student on a different planet, it feels like, given the changes that have happened not only in the old country but all over the world. I was not an activist student because I was busy fighting my own problems, the primary one being how to get out of the undergraduate major that I hated. But, I was a college student when students-at-large managed to influence a significant policy change.
Sri Lanka, the island, which was referred to as "Serendip" by the Arab merchants for the enchanting beauty that it was, which then gave the word "serendipity" to the English language, became hell on earth in July 1983.
In what came to be referred to as "Black July" in 1983, the simmering tensions between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils became a bloody war. Whatever the grievances were, and however (il)legitimate they were, non-violent political discourse failed.
I was an undergraduate student in Coimbatore when newspapers carried reports and photos on the front pages. Those were some chaotic undergraduate years, in my mind and in the world outside. (A year later, Indira Gandhi was shot dead, which then unleashed a killing frenzy, a pogrom, in India too.) Conversations at tea-stalls near the college were all about Lanka. India being a country of argumentative people with strong opinions, there were discussions in plenty over the watery and sugary tea.
Within a matter of days, our college and most colleges throughout the state were closed down because of student protests. The youth in Tamil Nadu wanted the Indian government to step in and help the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The federal government was forced into action.
It was a similar environment of student protests in the 1960s in the US and in Western Europe.
But, these are not the 1960s of the US, nor the 1980s of Tamil Nadu.
What does activism mean in these times?
Certainly not a mere 100 students rallying at a trustees meeting. Social media and smartphones make flash mobs get together for dancing in the streets, but not for students to protest?
I suppose the revolution isn’t Instagramable!
I share your frustration on this subject. I was part of the 1960 student revolts! We believed that we could change the world--and we did for a short time--until the pendulum swung back. I started seeing student apathy in the early nineties during the Gulf War. I was teaching at a local community college in PA and was shocked that my students wore the yellow ribbons pushed by Bush Sr in support of war. I assigned them essays on Anti War demonstrations, forcing them to listen, maybe, flipping maybe two students out of sixty or so. And so it goes..... Scary!