Differences in Activism based on the Type of Institution The student activism literature finds differences in the occurrence of campus activism based on institutional characteristics (Kane 2013; Van Dyke 1998; Reyes 2015; Soule 1997). For example, one study found that religious institutions were far less likely to have campus LGBT groups than non-religious institutions (Kane 2013). In contrast, more selective institutions and institutions with larger endowments were more likely to have LGBT student groups (Kane 2013). In addition, larger schools seem to have more student activism (Van Dyke 1998). Institutions with a greater percentage students living in the dorm seems to have more student activism (Van Dyke 1998). During the 1980s, …show more content…
Furthermore, the author sought to understand both the occurrence of activism and campus receptiveness to activism at these two types of colleges and universities. However, there was not a huge body of literature that specifically examined activism at secular private universities and religiously affiliated universities. Extensively searching through EBSCO, GoogleScholar, and the author’s own college library search engine yielded a few articles that directly discuss activism on these campuses.
Secular Private Colleges and Universities The literature examined secular private colleges and universities through the study of liberal arts colleges and elite private institutions (Reyes 2015; Soule 1997; Warnock and Hurst 2016; Winston 2013). Research suggests secular private institutions have higher rates of activism than other types of colleges and universities (Soule 1997). However, more in-depth examinations of activism on these types of campuses provides a much more nuanced perspective. Reyes (2015) examined how Latino students engaged in political activism at one liberal arts college. While “students inhabited Latino politics through deliberation, dialogue, and even professional pursuits”, students were reluctant to protest because they had “close, personalized relationships with administrators” (Reyes
As American universities and colleges grow their demographics, diversity and ideas there is a continued and an accelerated debate regarding freedom of speech within these higher education institutions. College campuses are struggling to simultaneously provide a learning environment that is inclusive to traditionally unrepresented students while also providing an environment that allows for ideas to be challenged and debated no matter how offensive or controversial.
It is made clear that college students are quick to form an opinion which doesn’t expand knowledge and can show unintelligence. Many people, more specifically protesters, believe one side and won’t open up and listen to the other side. Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times and the author of 3 New York Times best sellers in 2015, 2009, and 2002, tells us that the college protesters are wrong. His argument states that the college students need to be educated more on the whole subject because lacking education can essentially lead to being biased or sticking with the one side you believe in. The students were protesting a guest speaker, Charles Murray, who is identified as anti-gay, racist, and sexist. Although the guest speaker’s beliefs are terrible, the students should hear what he has to say. Frank Bruni’s “The Dangerous Saftey of College” presents an effective logical appeal; however, it lacks clear and concise evidence along with not presenting an emotional appeal to connect with the audience.
Colleges and universities are places of higher education and learning. Part of this learning comes from listening and understanding opposite views from your own. Positively, these zones have allowed students to avoid any ideas they may not want to hear; however, avoidance is not the way around life. Another positive outcome of free speech on campuses is that students are able to bind together
The 1990 documentary, Berkeley in the Sixties, offers a retrospective of the realization and evolution of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California, Berkeley. Through a mixture of archival footage and “talking head” interviews, the film makes a compelling argument about the importance of Berkeley in the protest movements of the 1960s, but at the same time falls victim to some of the pitfalls common in documentary films that make them unreliable as historical documents. The film offers plenty of firsthand accounting and contemporary footage that give it a sheen of authenticity, however, in its lionization of UC alums it also manages to conflate an entire decade and a complex national gestalt with static instances and the hindsight remembrances of a handful of activists.
In Nancy Cantor’s Civic Engagement: The University as a Public Good, she argues that universities should be culturally diverse, socially innovating, and models of a community that should be seen around the world. According to Cantor this can only happen through liberal learning, building sustained exchanges, creating exchanges across the boundaries of race and ethnicity, and creating experiments of exchange for universities to try on their campuses.
“Over the years, courts have ruled that college officials may set up reasonable rules to regulate the ‘time, place and manner” that the free speech can occur, as long as the rules are “content neutral,’ meaning they apply equally to all sides of issues” (Fisher, 2008). Speech codes and free speech zones on campus do exist for many reasons: many of the causes or topics that students or others looking to interact with students take up are controversial and can frequently take on less of an academic or social justice overtone and more of a hateful one. Hate speech is the greatest threat to freedom of speech on college campuses, and the limitations colleges and universities put on student’s verbal freedoms are largely in place as efforts to avoid it. Religion, in particular, is a hot topic on campuses and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more aggressive and argumentative than universities would like. However, under the First Amendment, individuals do have a right to speech that the listener disagrees with and to speech that is offensive and hateful. It’s always easier to defend someone’s right to say something with which you agree. But in a free society, you also have a duty to defend speech to which you may strongly object.
According to Rawls, citizens, or campus community members in this case, must work toward creating equality for the disadvantage. Therefore, I first argue that community members should have the liberty to not have to be constantly reminded of their social, political, and economic oppression. To this end, I hone in on self-respect as a liberty that these traditions do not allow. Then, I analyze the 2013 Diversity Matters: The University of Mississippi Diversity Plan to illustrate how administrators are envisioning the universities continued departure from the confederacy. My aim is to show how the university is working toward Rawls’ second principle of justice with the proposed plan.
As an institution, Marist College has partaken in several social change movements. Students activists at Marist introduced The Marist Unity Project as an event to encourage communication and support within the college community, especially after the results of the presidential election. This movement included students writing positive messages on sticky notes and posting them on a wall. Everyone was also encouraged to share their valuable thoughts to others as a method to engage in an open dialogue between the students, faculties, and staff members. This effective project continued with a peaceful Unity March from the campus to the City Hall of Poughkeepsie. This march further emphasized the significance of unity and equality on all college
The University of Missiouri incident was an eye opener for universities around the nation. There has been a lot of racial tension between students and student affair professionals on the campus. Here is the problem? Sabatke ( 2015) States that students at the University of Missouri engaged in a hunger strike and boycott in protest of the UM system president, Tim Wolfe. They said that, since Wolfe took office as UM president in 2012, he had been negligent in addressing incidents of racism and concerns of students and faculty in regards to MU's campus climate. Concerned Student 1950 is the primary group of students behind the protests.
The presence of fear begins to reduce when students start to create a tolerant, inclusive social normality. This theory is discussed in a study conducted by Rebecca L. Stoltzer and Emily Hosselman. It is concluded that when looking at the pros and cons of a more diversely populated campus climate, these results insinuate a, “promising relationship between increased diversity in the student body and a reduced number of hate crimes on campus” (Stoltzer and Hosselman 654). It is Stoltzer and Hosselman that actually argue the investigation of how students rather than the institutions can reflect on campus climate. This can once again be completely traced back to student interpretation and how they choose to react or not react on those interpretations. This topic is also explored in an article by Raymond A. Winbush in which he pleads to, “Establish a campus committee involving high-level administrators and students from both the victimized group and popular campus organizations such as fraternities and sororities” as one of his do’s on a list of do’s and don’ts (Winbush par. 26). This is a great way in order to promote inclusion without instilling fear or blame on certain groups of
By the 2000s, Bayview-Hunters Point had spoken up for itself loudly in the form of community activism. In his journal article “No More Power Plants”, Joshua Arce (2009) reports on the recent, successful activism of Ms. Espanola Jackson, a well-known community activist who lived in Bayview-Hunters Point since 1948. In 2006, Ms. Jackson called for the closure of the coal-burning Hunters Point Power Plant which caused adverse health effects to district residents. Through Ms. Jackson’s consistent pressure and support from environmentalists and other activists, the plant was eventually closed down in 2006. All along, Ms. Jackson was fighting for the rights of the low-income communities of color who had, for a long time, been politically segregated from the rest of the city.
What motivated conservative women into political activism between 1980-2008? What organizations and networks did they form? What were their central issues?
In the reading “Small Change : Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses the act of four brave college students and their act of social activism. The four freshmen from a local all black college sat down at a counter in a diner near Greensboro, North Carolina and were denied service because of their race. The students refused to leave and instead started a protest there at the restaurant. The numbers of people protesting with the four young men increased as the story spreaded across states. The story of the sit in was done without the use of any technology or social network. Gladwell discussed the effectiveness of the sit-in because of the relationship between
In his editorial, “The Year of the Imaginary College Student,” Hua Hsu asserts that “alarm about offense-seeking college students say[s] more about critics than the actual state of affairs.” Hsu begins his article by discussing James O’Keefe’s attempt at Vassar College to depict that college students are as politically sensitive as they appear. He goes on to demonstrate that college students are getting increasingly more “hypersensitive.” Hsu then questions the “surge of interest in campus life,” wondering why people who are not in college are questioning the behavior of those in college. Next, Hsu states that this panic about “offense-seeking college students” says more about the people criticizing rather than the system. Elucidating, he
At UC-Berkeley, the course description for "Politics and Poetics" (Fall Course 2002) stated that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections." (SAF 1). Though the instructor later apologized for the description, this is the sort of encouragement conservative-minded students are greeted with many times during their college experience. It is said that in class, students are taught that their country -- and Western culture in general -- is tainted by racism, sexism, and oppression (Stearn 2).