When you look outside Johnson Hall, what do you see? Protests? Painted sheets?
Well, what I see is a bad case of compensation. As the sons and daughters of the flower children, we have quite a reputation to live up to. I’m sure that we have seen old photos of our moms and dads with long hair, tie-dyed shirts, joints in hand or perhaps flaming bras. Who hasn’t looked and thought, “Man, that would be fun”? So we regress. We listen to the Grateful Dead, we put our hair in dread locks, we make movies like “Born on the Fourth of July,” and we search endlessly for causes to fight for.
We have to search for these causes because we don’t have any of our own. We don’t have a big war going on. We aren’t fighting for our right to vote. Instead, we find things like the World Trade Organization and the Worker Rights Consortium.
When it seems that searching for our own identity is fruitless, we steal ideas from other generations. How many 1980s cartoon characters do you see on 1990s T-shirts? What about that swing craze a couple years ago? Sure, these are examples from pop culture, not causes, but doesn’t our culture say the most about our society?
The evidence is right in front of us that this doesn’t work. We try to make our time something it’s not, and look what happens. We riot and burn up Woodstock … Woodstock! The symbol of peace for a generation, and we set it on flames. And just look at what happened when we try to bring back “Star Wars” mania. Meesa really sucked.
I am being a little sarcastic, but there are examples from the current protest. I hear words like “system,” “upper class” and “oppression” being thrown around outside Johnson Hall. The only way there could be more buzz is if you add a “post” or “neo” somewhere in there. It seems these words are in some protester’s handbook. Students were arrested chanting, “The people united will never be divided!” Come on! At least make up your own chant. I’ll give you a hand: “We’re staying in the lobby because it’s our new hobby!”
Coincidentally, I have just read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” for my Writing 122 class. Wow! Maybe that class is useful. These essays inspired many of the ideas the protesters seem to be putting into practice. Direct action. Civil disobedience. But both these men were writing about injustices that they were being subjected to personally. I don’t see anybody being forced to wear University-licensed clothes. And yet, how many of you have your University hat, shirt, mug, bumper sticker, etc.? What about disobedience? Doesn’t the fact that protesters have been granted permission to be in front of Johnson Hall mean that they aren’t being disobedient at all?
Right now, the University is the home of a big sleep-over. The metaphorical “parents” let the kids stay knowing full well that they will be loud and stay up all night, but it will be fun for them. I have been asked to come to the protests at night a few times because “it’s going to be a party.” After that the person told me to support the WRC. But first, it’s a party.
There is nothing new in this protest. We have seen it before in our parents’ actions and throughout history. But the causes we are fighting for now pale in comparison to those of the past. This protest will hold no significance if Frohnmayer agrees that the University should join the WRC. The protesters will pack up and go back to sleeping in their own beds, and the people who didn’t care will continue to not care. And all of us will have a good story to tell our kids about radical social reform and fighting “the man.”