I wasn’t born in the sixties and I, too, worked through school (in fact I’m a case of the ‘take he money don’t look back’ college situation.) Revolt at injustice/wanting to improve things, no matter how poorly defined the cause or the action, isn’t an upper middle class prerogative.
In the 80’s, the only line’s I stood in were for class registration and Florida/Georgia football tickets. I did enjoy heckling the handful of 70’s style hippie protestors still on campus; chanting “BOMB! IRAN!, BOMB! IRAN!”, at large sporting events; and attending speeches sponsored by our local NOW chapter, to show “support” (with 20 to 1 male to female student ratios in our engineering classes, we would pretty much do anything…yes, we were a sad, sad, group).
Good times…Good times…
BOMB! IRAN! BOMB! IRAN!
(with apologies to my many Iranian friends…I hope they don’t read this post, or I have some explaining to do…)
BOMB! IRAN! BOMB! IRAN!
According to news media, he will graduate. He received probation in effect until he graduates.
Î went to a relaively conservative university so our protest was trying to convince the administration to accept having condoms in the campus clinic. 
No dice. There was a successful, modest proposal to recognize the right of homosexuals to exist (how far we’ve come) and a big one about divesting from collegiate apparel sweatshops known to use child labor (that one worked).
Not sure why attending NOW was “sad”?
I didn’t do chanting or marching either,just because I listed those activities dosn’t mean they apply to me, but I know it’s part of being in college to be moved by something. To be so enamored with the power of ideas, to be part of somthing larger than yourself, and the possibility of action is part and parcel of that age. I’m guessing some of it also exists in the crowds attending college football games, although more visceral than intellectual.
(I felt really sad for the poster who said she never believed in change and possibilites, even when young.)
Would be kind of fitting if, I dunno, if someone a protest (for any reason whatsoever) and disrupted the graduation.
Well, not fitting, and in fact a bad thing. But part of me wonders just how impartial the support is for a protest.
People used to yell at you, even in the 80’s, for being in uniform. The funny thing was, you just reminded yourself that part of your job was enabling that right, so long as it was pursued legally.
@MYOS1634 LOL…attending the NOW meetings was “sad”, because I was only there for the GIRLS…which I found out didn’t really worked out for me, since it was a lot of ANGRY GIRLS…oh…oh… X_X
PAre we so old that we forgot our time of marching, chanting, sitting in, passing out petitions, starting assembly debates on crucial and urgent matters…"
How old are you?? I went to college in the mid 80s. Not the late 60s.
As indicated, I wasn’t born then and I’m not describing specifically my behavior.
Some of us are over sixty and old enough to remember the antiwar/civil rights protests of the late sixties/early seventies.
When I applied to college in my mid-teens, my parents steered me away from elite schools (such as Swarthmore) with a history of strong antiwar protest movements. Some of their friends had children who became seriously derailed after participating in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and the prospect was frightening to them. But by the time I was in college, antiwar protests and anti-Nixon rallies were just about EVERYWHERE.
However, being busted with a disproportionate penalty in relation to the nature of the offense is not only unjust for the one being punished, but also hurts the reputation of the educational institution by creating an effective martyr and proving the institution is as tyrannical and bad for the protesters and the public at large.
Incidentally, this was one reason why many campus protests of the 1960’s were effective in influencing deep changes in college campus life and the larger US political scene.
For instance, they were often cited by many across the political spectrum as a key factor in rapidly changing the larger US public perception of the Vietnam War and how it was prosecuted.
Another example…Kent State where National Guardsmen armed with M-1 rifles shot several students and killed a few.
Also, it’s unconfirmed, but I’ve heard from several older Oberlin alums who were contemporaries with Avery Brooks while he was a student there(mid-late '60s) that one reason why he graduated much later than he would have was that he was briefly expelled for participating in student protests by an administration which was still pretty old-school in its treatment of protests. They still remembered that and felt the deep anger towards an administration which they felt was not only ignoring student concerns, but also was too harsh in its punishment of protesting students.
Ironically, Oberlin now regards Avery Brooks as one of its notable alums, awarded him an honorary degree for his achievements, and he happened to be on campus performing Paul Robeson.
Some students prefer attending colleges where Div I sports and with a more conservative/center-right student body.
Also, part of this may be the time you attended college as the college students who attended during the Reagan/Bush I years tended to be much more conservative in most mainstream US colleges* than before or afterwards.
And if you and others like you enjoyed taunting hippies protesting…you should have no issues with radical-left protesters doing the same at conservative protests(i.e. anti-abortion, anti-GBLTQ, etc) or political rallies/events…especially of one presumptive presidential frontrunner for his party…
As for your Iranian friends, I wouldn’t be surprised if many would find that song very offensive…especially if they still have family living there. Would most of us feel any different if someone who was strongly anti-American joked about Pearl Harbor to WWII veterans/Greatest Generation or 9/11 in the same context?
- Exceptions were schools like Oberlin, Antioch, and Berkeley where student protests were still very intense. Part of the reason for that was a reaction to the Reagan/Bush I administration and a more conservative mainstream American society. Some of that reaction was still quite apparent when I was a college student in the '90s. Ironically, it seems Berkeley has changed in the '90s to the point one student opted to transfer out to Oberlin because in his words "Berkeley has become too damned pre-professional and conservative."
I agree[d]; expulsion is/was beyond reasonable.
When my HS classmate and I were hanging out with his former '60s hippie dad sometime during break of our freshman year in college, we were giving him a bit of a hard time about his generation(Baby boomer).
The dad started with a lecture about how some of the protests not only advanced American society in larger areas such as Civil/Women’s Rights, but also in areas which later generations of college students benefited.
One example he cited was how college students of his day(early-late '60s) once had strict mandatory dress codes* and protests by hippies like him eventually prompted most colleges/universities to do away with such codes so undergrads in most mainstream colleges aren’t restricted in what they were allowed to wear.
- In the father's freshman year at NYU in 1964, he was kicked out of a morning class by a Prof for the day for forgetting to wear a tie with the dress shirt, pants, and shoes. He felt being forced from a lecture for a restrictive dress code was extremely stupid and that was one of the factors which prompted him to join the early hippie protesters.
^^ the student doesn’t get to decide if the punishment is too harsh. If the student handbooks says “those trespassing are subject to expulsion” that’s what the punishment is.
In some sports, the penalty for getting a red card is ejection from the game and can’t play in the next. Doesn’t matter if the player meant to commit the foul, if there was any injury, if the rule is stupid.
I actually think the penalty for this student should be harsh. He planned the act, knew that the others weren’t allowed in the building and did it anyway. Deliberate acts should be punished, and since he was president of the student body, he should have known what the price of his actions were.
If punishments by a given society or institution are perceived as too harsh to fit the particular crimes by a critical mass of citizenry or members, it tends to result in protests or even a revolution.
Our own nation was founded partially because a critical mass of American colonists felt the British Crown’s policies on taxation and what they felt were harsh penalties/retribution by British Crown authorities was such that they had nothing to lose by launching a revolution.
Similarly, one reason why many '60s era campus protests were so widespread and influential in changing many fundamental areas of American law and campus life was precisely because the heated widespread protests were a reaction to campus administrations which were not only quite paternalistic, but acted so harshly they’d be considered exceedingly authoritarian by modern standards.
If the penalty is considered a slap on the wrist, people will also get upset.