Does anyone else sense that protesters on college campuses (and frankly, elsewhere as well) used to state that they wanted dialogue and debate about topics…but somewhere along the way, this was dropped and now they simply require 100% compliance with their demands at once, no debate, no discussion?
“Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”
“Wilson is against Women”
“Black Power”
If anything it’s gotten watered down.
But what are they protesting about today that’s comparable to civil rights or the Vietnam war? Insensitive Halloween costumes? Trans-friendly toilets? A gender wage gap that, when the relevant variables are controlled for, all but disappears anyway?
Sometimes, strong rhetoric is justified by the cause it serves. Sometimes, it…isn’t.
Perhaps true, but that doesn’t mean that the teens of yesteryear were any smarter, thoughtful, nor accepting, just that they happened to be teens during a time where the popular issues happened to be (possibly) worthwhile.
Just because there’s no relationship between popularity and value, that doesn’t mean that there’s a mechanism which prevents something of value from becoming popular.
Responsible protests:
What do we want?
Incremental change to the status quo!
When do we want it?
You know, whenever you’re not busy.
Abortion, economic inequality, worker rights, environmentalism, the security state, not getting shot, corporate control of X, various wars past and present.
I don’t think protests are good venues for debate between opposing sides since it usually ends up as a shouting match. YMMV. Unless you mean a leader from the protest is less accepting of compromise when they go to meet TPTB to hammer out a solution than they used to be. I’d like to see evidence.
I’d agree there’s a strain of holier than thou / purity self righteousness in many leftist organizations, but I don’t know if that’s really anything new.
They even admit it.
From a Yale student:
“And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.”
I was in college during the Vietnam War.
In those days, blowing up buildings, or setting them on fire, occupying them, disrupting commencement ceremonies, not to mention confrontations with the National Guard weren’t exactly rare.
“Leftist”? Is it your impression that rightist activists are models of humility and pluralism?
I agree, and in fact in college I dropped out of activism in no small part due to the intolerable levels of self-righteousness among activists. At the same time, sometimes it takes loudness to get results: in the Yale case, administration has only agreed to address student concerns after they started demonstrating about the issues.
It’s kind of a well-known phenomenon that if you lack power, and you talk softly and politely, people with power are likely to brush you off. Sometimes you have to create a public stink before they’re willing to go the trouble of addressing what you’re saying: you have to make it clear that continuing to ignore you is going to be even more trouble.
The impression I get is that today’s college students are anxious, depressed, and generally unhappy. College apparently just sucks now.
It’s because they raised the drinking age. In my day we spent all our time out of class drunk and contented.
A major component is the tens of thousands of dollars in debt they’re taking on. It seriously changes the dynamic. Universities are now services they’re paying for in blood and they aren’t m a mood to put up with less than perfect service.
Education should be free anyway.
I wouldn’t say *free *- what prevents a “student” from living in free dorm housing for 50 years? - but yes, it should be far cheaper than now.
What do we want? TIME TRAVEL!!
When do we want it? A WEEK AGO THURSDAY!!
That’s all society needs now. Less opportunity cost for useless degrees.
Unlikely. Kids that age are geared to having fun, and I know lots of kids/young adults who are having blast in college, just like we did. A few things might be different, but people are people, and young adults are going to find a way to party and have sex.
Mm
When did protestors ever say they wanted a dialog? By the time a grievance got to the public protest / signs and chants level, the time for debate had passed.
You may have a romanticized image of the college students in years past.
Assuming the OP’s premise is true, isn’t this a logical consequence of likening college to vocational training?
If I’m attending college so I can get a Good Job[sup]TM[/sup], I don’t want to hear jibber-jabbering from the professors regarding Halloween costumes or any other trivial pursuits. I don’t want to be forced to politely engage the president of the local fringe group the university has invited to speak. I just want to learn my differential equations so I can get my degree and get the fuck out of there.
Honestly, I didn’t go to college to be exposed to different ideas and become more tolerant of different political views. I wish that were true, but I’d be lying if I said it was. I went to college so that I could earn a degree in applied biology, so that I could become a scientist one day. Other people to go college other reasons (partying, for one). If you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition every year, you have the right to try to get whatever you want (or don’t want) out of the experience. Even if that means coming across as a whiny titty-baby.
It would be nice if the OP gave some actual evidence to back up his assertions. Or, we could as the mods to move this to IMHO…
At least this wasn’t another “Nm” post! 