Students Voice of Protest
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Date
Students Voices of Protest
During the 1960s, college students from major cities of Europe, such as Berlin, Paris, and New York, took massive part in social activism due to political upheavals that were happing around them. The students were possessed with a burning desire to bring change that would last for a lifetime. Due to their frustrations and despair, the students took to the streets and carried out massive demonstrations and strikes where they halted classes and shut down buildings to air their grievances. In the United States, for instance, protests were taken the White House doorstep almost all the time with placards that conveyed anti-war messages (Sutton, 2019). As the demonstrations widely spread, schools became the main centers of agitation fostered by the administration of President Johnson and his decision to abolish the deferments of drafts for thousands of students who had graduated, and this move affected approximately over six hundred thousand people.
Some of the students’ principal targets for criticism, and reasons as to why
In the Year 1964, there emerged a student Movement at the University of California due to an attempt by the University administration to suppress student’s participation in civil rights activism and the formation of political movements on campuses. Other student groups with similar demands sprung mostly across the U.S to challenge to move to restrict political uprisings in colleges. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, who was an American civil rights leader, and Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, also steered the anger of not only campus students but also the general public to participate in riots and demonstrations to yield for a change.
The primary focal points for these protests were racism and the U.S participation in the Vietnam war, which had greatly expanded. This is because the years preceding the year 1968 were witnessed by tragedies of war and uncountable casualties in the war that was occurring in Vietnam. Students, therefore, participated in Organized attacks as viewed them as a legitimate means of airing their grievances. The consequences of the administrations appeared less responsive, would erupt to more serious demands such as the firing of the administration.
President Johnson called for a bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder due to the significant increase in the military presence of America’s military, which had been growing since the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Student for a Democracy Society, for instance, was a local group formed to protest against Jonson’s move, and anti-war messages disseminated through underground means (Sutton, 2019). The massive expenditure by the government on the war gave rise to economic deterioration in the U.S that shaped public opinion against the government’s motive. Moreover, in several Universities, especially in the United States, students steered an opposition to the firms that participated in profiting from the war as well as the move by their respective universities to invest in Companies that were making gasoline called napalm, used in making firebombs and flamethrowers. Such companies include Dow Chemical.
The general public condemned the government hierarchy and the authority, which was irrational in its elastic logic. The top government offices were occupied by petty bosses who were intolerant to the pressing societal problems such as poverty and injustice and racial inequalities, according to a Nanterre University student, Nelly Finkielsztejn. She adds that as a student, they understood the normalcy of standing against authorities’ malevolence and therefore found a new wave of solidarity which she embraced in her entire life.
Ways in which the events of 1968 personally transformed some of these students.
Dany Cohn-Bendit, a Nanterre University Student’s Leader in the year 1968, spoke about his vivid memories of that particular year that made him optimistic about history. Students participated in various collective spontaneous activities on the streets, naturally releasing feelings that were somehow repressed and expressed them in a festive spirit. Thousands of students felt the need for candid communications and love for each other.
Rene Bourrigaud, a student in École Superieure d’Agriculture in Angers France, asserts that there was a new wave of every person’s ability to speak their mind. During May, more so, there was the need to speak for everyone. People learned much more than they ever learned in their academic years of studying. It was like a dream world for the students.
Pete Latarche, another student Leader at The University Occupation in Hull City, England, in the year 1968, remembers how people were learning the art of self-confidence by personally doing things. Students from middle-class families who never used to talk on socio-political issues were now finally opening up. There was a new democracy in the public space in the market place as he puts it. Furthermore, the success in the resistance of the Vietnamese showed that fighting back could be a success (Sutton, 2019). There was a need for the western people to emulate the poor peasants and stand against the U.S government’s atrocities in Vietnam. The myth that the U.S government must not get provoked since it can give rise to blowing up the whole world got destroyed.
Some of the students began to be political in a different way hence making useful connections between the conditions that occurred the students and the broader issues globally. For instance, one would get a low mark in mathematics and make it a focal point if the student linked the responsible professor and his authoritarian and arbitrary behavior to the significant issues like the Vietnamese war. Responding to the immediate questions made the students understand better the bigger picture that surrounded them. It is according to Agnese Gatti, a student at Trento Institute of Social Sciences in Italy.
Some historians argue that the student protests of 1968 made governments less inviolable and sacred. What evidence can you find here to support this assertion?
The anti-war activists not only contributed to constraining the president’s capacity to further champion for the rocketing war effort in the year 1965 but also advanced the confidence of the society to champion for law and order. The activisms also enabled people like Richard Nixon to take part in the 1968 presidential campaigns and use the rhetoric to formulate harsh approaches in quieting down the anti-war activities although he failed after hand.
There became a consistent wholesome reaffirmation quelling down the government activities in Vietnam. Students caught up in a new wave of modern ways doing things since the typical capitalist societal norms were being sidelined (Sutton, 2019). It was a kind of liberation as well as a political struggle not only in the United States but also in the surrounding countries like Columbia. People developed fearless mannerisms regarding political issues. For instance, the events that occurred in Missouri University from 1968 through the 1970s gave birth to similar uprisings in other Universities such as Yale ported revolts identical to those that happened in the 1960s hence had enormous political consequences nationally.
The media was playing an essential role in covering the campus students protest protesting against the war in Vietnam and the presence of federal government on campus. They had systematic script scripts for these events, especially by 1969, that sparked riots and demonstrations not only by campus students but also by religious leaders and the general public. The protests could sometimes turn violent and involving police arrests, and this shaped public opinion against the administration, enabling the students sometimes to boycott classes (Sutton, 2019). The student protests helped them to present their demands like the elimination of ROTC as well as the increased admission of minority groups such as Blacks in the U.S colleges and Universities, requirements which they got granted due to the steady external pressure to the school administrations.
The protests also pushed for a change in higher education systems. Years later, after the 1968 protests, colleges decided that they would not only to teach students on the concerns of their immediate surrounding environments but also formulate an atmosphere free of sexism, racism, and homophobia. It is the colleges not only within the United States but also in other Surrounding nations at large. The colleges began to embrace and foster ideologies of progress among its students, fearing the consequences of the protests. In the subsequent years, protestors started by reporting the underlying prejudices in their respective campus. They fiercely respond to such incidents by calling on the administration if it failed to create a conducive enabling environment.
References
Sutton, N. (2019). ” Have You Bought Enough Vietnam?”: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at West Virginia University, 1967–1970. West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies, 13(1), 27-55.