Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

QUALLEN: In Protest of Student Activism’s Departure

QUALLEN%3A+In+Protest+of+Student+Activisms+Departure

The face of a gleeful student protester graced the cover of the March 13, 1969 issue of The Hoya. A member of the Class of 1972, the student held up a burning issue of this same paper.

In a strong demonstration that week in Dahlgren Quad, students distributed Students for a Democratic Society paraphernalia and, alongside The Hoya, torched an effigy of “Joe Hoya” — a symbol of everything they had come to hate.

Before the year ended, students would topple Georgetown’s first iteration of student government, occupy classrooms, go on strike and lay the foundation for a lawsuit against the university.

I have never participated in a sit-in or gone on strike. Neither have my friends. We were radical once. So what happened?

For one, the students making demands met with some degree of success. They established successful institutions. The new undergraduate student government — another forerunner of the Georgetown University Student Association — replaced the fractious and conservative Yard government. Students of Georgetown Inc. came into being to fund student lawsuits against the university. Women joined men studying in the College.

History marched along, too. Students gained distance from the political boiling over that followed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The war in Vietnam came to a close. Students, it would seem, had less to be radical about.

But radicalism among students was not only restricted to the late 1960s. In the 1980s, students set up a shanty town on Copley Lawn to protest apartheid in South Africa, demanding the university divest its endowment of holdings in that nation’s economy.

Instead of complying with those students’ wishes, the university demolished their structure. Students and faculty were enraged and ultimately prevailed upon the university to divest. For many years, gay students at Georgetown sought the right to organize. By the time the university did recognize GU Pride, it had become entangled in a decade-long legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

More recently, students’ furious response to the university’s bungled handling of a hate crime pushed the Out for Change campaign into high gear, resulting in the expansion of programming for LGBTQ students that took place in 2007.

But, students don’t always find something to be furious about. Even if the students behind the divestment campaign launched by GU Fossil Free channel this radical spirit, they hardly command the same attention. Have Georgetown students simply become less willing to pressure the administration in recent years?

Maybe they have.

For one, Georgetown has become more expensive. Students paying $60,000 a year to pass through a credentialing factory make poor muckrakers. Many of them would rather find steady jobs than protest in a period of grave economic uncertainty. The great zeitgeists of protest that animated the ’60s and the ’80s have also faded for many students.

Even the Occupy movement has faded, leaving Georgetown students with few obvious examples of civic organization to consult. Instead, we have a spate of leftover institutions, which have not retained their salty character. The Corp, which once sold bongs and attempted to sell condoms at the height of the AIDS crisis, no longer finances student rebellion. Instead, it sells coffee.

Does this pose a problem? Not for students who have abandoned the pursuit of justice. If we do not see injustices in our lives and university, why protest?
However, for those students who seek to reform our university and the world, this transformation must be tremendously frustrating. These students remember that students can march, students can strike, students can write and yell and fight. They remember that at the pivotal moments in history, students have proven a potent political force. I hope that they can remind us how decisively students can move when they are angry.

Matthew QuallenMatthew Quallen is a junior in the School of Foreign Service. Hoya Historian appears every other Friday.

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  • J

    Jiang ZeminAug 29, 2014 at 11:46 am

    This generally interesting piece neglects to mention the highly successful student activism surrounding the One Georgetown, One Campus campaign last year.

    Students wrote (campaign directors Zach Singer and Rosie Lauricella and their team produced an insightful white paper challenging conventional wisdom), yelled (organizing a rally at the Healy Gates) and fought (organizing a referendum and voting by an 86 percent margin) against the administration’s proposed satellite campus.

    The result was a win for students and a permanent, positive mark on our campus: residential housing in a historic space in the heart of our community. That victory was politicized in an attempt to discredit Mr. Singer’s GUSA campaign, but a victory — for students and for student activism — it surely was.

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