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Student Protest movement Essay examples

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A Battle of Rights

The Student Protest Movement of the 1960's was initiated by the newly

empowered minds of Americas youth. The students who initiated the movement had just

returned from the “Freedom Summer” as supporters of the Civil Rights Movement,

registering Black voters, and they turned the principles and methods they had learned on

the Freedom Rides to their own issues on campus. These students (mostly white, middle

class) believed they were being held down by overbearing University rules.

Student life was governed by the policy of in loco parentis, which allowed colleges to act

"in place of the parents."

Off campus,these young people were …show more content…

On October 1

students on their way to class were greeted by handbills declaring that if they allowed the

administration to suspend the “offenders” they will have given up on the fight. That same

day, close to a dozen solicitation tables were set up on the lawn in front of Sproul Hall.

Some of the groups who set up these tables were CORE (Congress of Racial

Equality ), SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and SNS (Students for

a Democrat Society ). The assistant dean of students approached Jack Weinberg,

attending the CORE table, and asked to identify himself. When Weinberg refused the

dean ordered campus police to arrest him. As Weinberg was carried off by the guards,

those around him quickly came to his rescue. In minutes hundreds of protesters, singing

the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome," and chanting, "Let him go! Let him go!"

surrounded the car, preventing it from taking Weinberg off to security headquarters. One

by one the protesters climbed to the roof of the vehicle to address the growing crowd. In

complying with the idea of non-violent protesting, many speakers even removed their

shoes before stepping up to the “podium”, one of them being Mario Savio (one of the

most prominent leaders of the SPM). This lasted for more than thirty hours and resulted

in an agreement between Clark Kerr, president of the multicampus

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