Is this the new student activism?

I often hear a wistful regret expressed that students have lost their passion; that the student activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s has been lost and will not come again.  I don't agree.

In 1968 UM President Robben Fleming and future Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers were communicating with each other through bull horns on the lawn outside the president’s house on South University avenue in Ann Arbor.  While Fleming was against the war in Vietnam and generally tolerant of student protests, Ayers still saw him as “the establishment.”  Fleming writes in his autobiography of addressing crowds of protesters so large they shut down streets, of draft cards and flags burning in his yard, and confederate flags appearing in his windows.  When the Chicago Seven were convicted, a protest march of some 2000 appeared in Ann Arbor.

On the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral, a group of students occupied the University of Michigan’s administration building, baring the doors against entry.  BAM, the Black Action Movement formed in Ann Arbor, and in 1970 organized a general student strike.  Students stopped going to class, professors canceled classes, and the university effectively shut down for a week.  BAM demanded increased black student enrollment at the university, and through negotiations with Fleming, they got it.   These students were passionate.  They saw that the world could be better, and insisted that it be made so.

Where is this passion today?  I think it is still here, but our students have become much more sophisticated in pushing their agendas, and their agendas are theirs, not ours.

Consider for example, today's MPowered student group.  The students in MPowered are passionate about entrepreneurship.  While many of us old “establishment” professors see entrepreneurship as the process of starting a business, the students in MPowered see it as an empowerment mindset.  Their mission, at root, seems to be to make each student realize that that her ideas have value and power, and to provide each student with intellectual tools for making her ideas impact the world.   They routinely get 3000 “pitches” in their annual pitch contest.  Their latest campaign is a petition drive, 1000 Voices, petitioning our College of Literature, Science and the Arts to provide more classes in entrepreneurship.   As I write this they have over 1200 signatures on their petition.

Another example is BLUElab.  These students seek to create appropriate technologies for the developing world, and to actually deploy them in those countries where they will make a difference.  They put huge energy into this, both in Ann Arbor and at sites in developing counties.  Their latest effort is a wind turbine with woven blades that can be made by local women in Guatemala, producing the product for local markets, and providing double economic impact.

These are just two examples; there are others.  The students in BLUElab and in MPowered are passionate about what they do.  They see that the world could be better, and insist that it become so.

Are these the new student activists?