The Daily Orange

The Daily Orange News Analysis
It provides insight into important news events while focusing on the background, context and future of the situation. The article is influenced by the writer's understanding, reporting and familiarity with the subject matter, but does not contain any personal opinions.



The year is 1970. College campuses across the country are rallying, rioting and protesting the Vietnam War. Syracuse University closes its doors six weeks early before summer vacation.

America is at war.

And less than four decades later, America is at war again.

The university campus has been a place of discussion for decades, where social and political issues can be debated and evaluated by students and faculty alike. Professors have served as leaders to students who want to make a change throughout generations of social conflict.

At SU, student activism is still alive. Though the barricades, signs and teach-ins of the late '60s might not be, students still have opinions on what's going on in the world today.

"A lot of people care, but a lot of the people that care don't really know how to express their thoughts and they feel overwhelmed by the issues," said Marshall Henry, a member of the Student Peace Action Network (SPAN).

Henry said his group's faculty adviser, political science professor Horace Campbell, is very supportive in assisting the group and going to its events.

"Faculty members know how the university system works, how to put on an event," Henry said. "Sometimes, it's really complicated to have a demonstration or video screening, but they've been around longer. They know how to get funding."

But despite groups like Henry's, there is certainly a change in student response to social issues from that of previous decades.

"On this campus, at this moment, there's an innocence of what's going on," humanities professor Amy Lang said of the student body. "What dismays me and concerns me is a loss sense of the civic."

She said during the war in Vietnam in the '60s it was believed if students "got out there and screamed and yelled," it would make a difference.

Henry, a senior music industry major, said many students do care about current issues, but getting involved is a different story.

"I think students care about issues like the war in Iraq, the environment," Henry said. But he said students can "feel disconnected from the government, like no one is listening to you."

"Writing letters and going to rallies and not really seeing changes - it's discouraging," Henry said.



During the student strike in 1970, there were "quite a few faculty members in agreement," said SU assistant archivist Mary O'Brien. She said some demonstrations also took place on behalf of professors for subjects about unionizing.

Lang described teach-ins from the late '60s and early '70s as one method of student activism that linked professors and students on a certain issue. Faculty and guest speakers who were experts on a certain issue would spend six to 10 hours talking in a large auditorium to students.

"The point was to get expertise on the issue," Lang said, "even if it was held by someone whose opinions you didn't much like."

David Bennett, a Meredith professor of history at SU, said he was personally involved in organizing a teach-in at SU during the late '60s, as well as developing connections with the Coalition for a Democratic Alternative.

Bennett, who has been at SU since the early '60s, said he was against the university's decision to close the school during the student strike.

"Students called for a strike, the administration accepted it," he said.

Bennett said he did not want to cancel his courses. He said he did not think an institution should take a stance on an issue like the war, and by closing down the university in response to the war, it was.

During the strike, he and several other colleagues organized classes for students on relevant issues, like how the country got involved with Vietnam.

Teach-ins use academia as a basis for social revolution. Students could learn about what was going on, form opinions and figure out how to act on them.

"That's the basis for teaching, for us to organize changes," Lang said. But she also addressed faculty's "reluctance to impose ideas" on students.



Lang said the culture wars of the '90s - which she calls "an attack on universities, especially the humanities, from the right" - created a mentality of professors that voicing political views can get them into trouble. Professors became uneasy about voicing their political views.

"There were certainly cases where it appeared students were placed in classes and told to record," Lang said about the state of universities during the "culture wars." Organizations would hire students to go into classrooms and find a bias. What professors said in class regarding political and social issues would be transcribed by the students. What they found would be used to embarrass they university, bring charges against faculty and build public arguments against "radicals" in the classroom, Lang said.

She noted a book funded by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research that was a "scathing attack on universities that left people feeling very vulnerable."

Though she said professors shouldn't indoctrinate students, the fear of such evaluations might produce fear of political activism.

"People present these things in careful ways," Lang said of social issue discussions in classes. "To encourage you to think about it."

It's important for professors to "not badger" students with their views, she said, to let them think for themselves.

"It's not the circulation of information. It's claims about their tone, and that shouldn't happen," Lang said, about a professor explaining their personal views and how they might be interpreted by students.

Professors should motivate students to think about current issues - that is, of course, their job, she said.

"I certainly have said to classes there is such-and-such event going on, and I encourage you to go and this is why," Lang said.

Lang said students might feel obliged to go along with it for the sake of their grade and reputation with the professor.

"I do not think faculty should approach students," she said, in terms of starting activist movements and demostrations. "They're powerless in relation to faculty."

Faculty could be useful as resources and as knowledgeable friends, Bennett said.

"Faculty should be there to talk to people who want to be activists and play a role, if necessary, outside the classroom," he said.



Larry Wolf, a biology professor who has taught at SU for about 40 years, said universities should be where discussion about such topics is generated.

"We're in the business of talking about ideas," Wolf said. He said academic freedom guarantees that discussion.

But, Wolf said, "there are not clean rules." He said it makes sense for professors to stick with the issues and controversies "in the context of their teaching."

He said controversial issues like stem cell research or evolution would be appropriate for him to discuss with a class in his field.

But that's in the classroom.

On Sept. 19, when Chief Justice John Roberts came to SU for the Newhouse III dedication, Wolf sat outside of Hendricks Chapel before Roberts' speech with a sign that read "Bong hits 4 Jesus," a reference to a controversial free speech case.

"The ruling was 5-4. It suggests their controversy," Wolf said. "It was the first time I ever picketed. I just thought it was really important at that time.

"In private, I'm just a citizen," he said.

Student and SPAN member Henry said many SU professors are proactive about engaging students to take action within student groups.

"Professors are happy to talk at events, to share some of their research," he said.

Professors can facilitate events for students or encourage their desire to do something proactive, bridging the gap between the classroom and the civic.

Bennett said reasons for a decrease in mass student activism may be because the current war doesn't involve a draft, or because it hasn't directly affected as many students.

"Not to say students aren't proactive," he said. "There is just not as many."

Bennett described the current attitude of students as "puzzling."

"You can't look to the faculty to start student activism," he said. "You have to look to the students."

Melissa Daniels is an assistant news editor at The Daily Orange. She can be reached at Melissa.m.daniels@gmail.com.

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