“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.” This sentiment of concern introduced the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962, and it continues to inspire student activism 45 years later.
SDS’s historic manifesto, originating from our university, injects an impulse for student action into a broader context, showing how that impulse can become a catalyst for societal transformation. At its core, the Port Huron Statement envisions the university as “a potential base and agency in a movement of social change” to bring about “participatory democracy” which empowers individuals through collective means to “share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of [one’s] life.” Such a vision has remained a definitive part of the dynamic of student activism. The recently published Guide to Blue Activism by Mollie Bates (‘07 alumnus), illustrates the historical manifestation of student activism on our campus.
At the University of Michigan, the radical ideal enumerated by SDS has been central to progressive campus movements and the groups that drove them. According to the Guide to Blue Activism groups such as the Black Action Movement, the South Africa Liberation Committee, Environmental Action and Students for Democratic Society successfully achieved some laudable, progressive goals, such as getting the University to address racial equality on campus, divestment from the apartheid-era South African regime as well as establishing the teach-in as a means of protesting the Vietnam War.
These student mobilizations had the shared characteristics of being grassroots, issue-driven, and campus-based. Students channeled their concerns about larger societal problems into tangible agendas that targeted the University and the immediate Ann Arbor community. To publicize their causes and to pressure their targets to address their issues, students often utilized a variety of tactics, including educational events, rallies, petitioning, and direct action (e.g., sit-ins and strikes).
In contrast, the Guide to Blue Activism’s focus on recent “student activism” draws on certain examples (College Democrats, Voice your Vote) which share no link to past activism tactics and purposes while also ignoring other current campus groups that do. It’s difficult to understand how College Democrats or Voice Your Vote fit the “student activism” mold.
As the book spells out, the main focus of the College Democrats is to work “to support every Democratic candidate, regardless of position on the ballot, each election.” In order to accomplish this during electoral cycles College Democrats direct their activities “to register, educate and drive [students] to the polls.” This machine-like process of herding students like sheep into the voting booth provides no room for students to shape and influence the agendas of these politicians that they so blindly support only because of a shared party affiliation.[are you sure of this fact…it’s a pretty bold statement so you gotta know!]
While student activism is supposed to empower individuals on campus to make tangible change, such activities relegate individuals to supporters of platforms and politicians that they have little control over besides the vote. Instead, College Democrats should use more of their significant access to manpower, funds, and local, state and federal politicians as a means of shaping candidates’ agendas to reflect students’ progressive stances as well as lobbying efforts on particular legislative issues between elections.
Voice your Vote has even less substance than the College Democrats[again, bold-not bad, but bold]. As a Michigan Student Assembly commission with significant funds from the off-campus organization Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), it has little grassroots connection to the general student body. Its mission “to register, educate and turn out student voters” demonstrates their hollow objectives with little vision for the type of change characteristic of historic student activism. Again, like the College Democrats, one’s vote is all that matters. Through their effort to educate voters, students can learn the stances of candidates on various issues and gauge their voting decisions on that basis. But in the end it still means placing the trust in candidates who may or may not live up to their campaign pledges.
Getting people to vote should not be an end in itself. It may be part of our democratic process and an important civic value. But confronting societal issues, a hallmark of student activism, requires more than just endorsing a slate of politicians. Even Students Supporting Affirmative Action, which was also voter-oriented, had a specific purpose and outcome by promoting the ballot as a means of defeating Proposal 2.
Even as the Guide to Blue Activism highlights the groups involved in past and present student activism, it selectively ignores other groups such as Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality (SOLE). The guide claims to “capture the work of our generation of activists” but as an active member of SOLE I know that our past accomplishments and influence on campus puts us into that “generation.”[you need to say this earlier…it hurts your credibility by bringing it up so late-just cut it] Since its 1999 formation, SOLE has pressured the University of Michigan to end the production of its apparel under sweatshop working conditions. Through sit-ins in 1999 and 2001, students forced the Administration to take action against this problem by adopting a Code of Conduct and affiliating with the Workers Right Consortium. Killer Coke Coalition used that same Vendor Code of Conduct in 2005 as a means of kicking the soft drink corporation off campus.
Yet despite these obvious successes, this book describes the sit-in as a “method…very popular decades ago” but “today…[it is] less effective” pointing to the Student Coalition of Color’s failed occupation of the Michigan Union tower in 2000. SOLE’s most recent sit-in in President Coleman’s office and subsequent arrest may give some credibility to their statement. But rather it’s a reflection of an increasingly hostile administrative stance towards student activism as an unprecedented act towards peaceful civil disobedience on campus in at least 30 years. Furthermore, by again resorting to direct action SOLE aimed to push the University further in the fight against sweatshops by adopting the Designated Supplier Program. This latest measure would, in sum, implement enforcement mechanisms into the Code of Conduct to ensure certain levels of working standards in Michigan apparel licensees’ factories. [cut this-too SOLE centered-makes it unbalanced]
And SOLE isn’t the only recent activist group on campus that the Guide to Blue Activism fails to mention. Other student organizations like Migrants and Immigrants Rights Awareness (MIRA), Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the F-Word and Women’s Forum have put forth particular causes on campus. By promoting progressive issues such as immigrant rights, Israeli occupation, rape culture and feminism, these groups have aligned their substance and purpose with the patterns of past student activism. As a result of these omissions, the Guide to Blue Activism fails to capture the broader constellation of progressive forces on campus carrying on the torch of student activism.