Students always protest, that’s what they do. And that’s a great thing. Students who have stopped protesting and are meek and quiet are sad to behold. Once students stop protesting and raising hell, we are all done for as a society. I’ve seen meek, complacent students in the post-Soviet space, and that was horrible.
What’s curious, though, is what students demand in their protests. I wasn’t around in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s, so I can’t say what student protests were like. I did, however, see (and participate in) the protests of 2003, 2007 and 2009. Only 10 years ago, it was my turn to present myself at the house of the President of Yale with a list of demands. And that was a great experience.
All of these protests were political in nature and had such demands as, “Stop the war in Iraq, recognize our union, no to our university investing in private jails, yes to higher salaries for janitorial staff, yes to daycare for faculty.” In short, the kind of stuff that political agents want to achieve.
And today the protests are all, “make us feel safe, make professors take sensitivity classes, I’m ill, give me a shrink” The private has washed out the public completely. People are not demanding political change, they ask for milk of human kindness to be poured on their psychic wounds.
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