It was a quiet Monday night at the Montgomery House. The intimate dinner catered by the Hanover Inn was as ordinary as a posting on the free food bulletin -- until the conversation took on a life of its own.
Topics of discussion were no less ambitious than climate change, the environment, global health, free speech -- all the great issues currently facing our generation. Discussion of these issues invariably leads to a comparison between our generation and that of our parents.
Thirty years ago, great issues such as these were at the forefront of collegiate conscience. Students collectively voiced their opinions in mass anti-war demonstrations, protests that uncompromisingly demanded change and changed those students' lives. Their actions defined a generation and changed the political climate. Even in our smaller world of Dartmouth, in more recent memory, the movement to divest from South Africa led students to build shanties on the Green in the dead of winter ("Divestment History," Nov. 15, 1993).
Contrast these examples with our generation. We currently take a pragmatic approach to changing the world, perhaps in reaction to the radical measures of those before us. Indeed, the recent campus movement to divest from Sudan did not involve protests or civil disobedience. Community hours and panel discussions were the tools of choice, and resulted in a trustee vote committed to divestment. Both of these divestment campaigns ended with the same results, although were met with widely different levels of resistance. The latest approach is undoubtedly higher order, leaving some of us to question if drastic measures such as demonstrations are even required in today's society.
Whether consciously or out of indifference, we are on a track to pragmatism. But before we define our generation in the eyes of history, we must question what we are losing.
Has shelving the practice of protesting limited our civil right to do so? Currently, protests across our nation occur in allotted areas, facing an ever-growing number of laws that restrict political protest (Miami), or roadside camping (Crawford, Tex.), or even laws that led to the arrest of anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan for the message on her T-shirt.
No matter their stances on these issues, I cannot help but be alarmed at the repercussions citizens of our country face for peacefully voicing their dissent. More importantly, these stories represent the slow death of our civil rights, and the events spur precious little fanfare and only a limited distribution.
Even the exemplary protests, however, were not initiated by people our age, and still represent our predecessors' method of dissent. Where is our generation's voice? By all accounts, we college students have let the tool of protest die. Sure, we marched when the administration cut the swim team, but broader issues outside the Dartmouth bubble have not inspired such demonstration. News stories give daily evidence of broader and deeper constraints on the voice of dissent in this country. Are we prepared to let the powers that be define our civil rights?
Reflection on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tells us that we cannot settle for this. A society without an active voice of dissent cannot be truly democratic. Freedom and constitutional rights are our national touchstones, even if they are ones we have become lazy in maintaining.
You would be hard pressed to find a person on this campus who would not like to see a change in the world. As college students, we are inherently idealists with little investment in the status quo, and therefore perfectly stationed at the margin of society to ignite change. It is simply a truth that people relegated to the margins bring about the most dramatic societal change. These voices have the passion and drive to call the current status into question. We represent one of these margins, but where is our voice? We should be driving this process, but instead, all that can be heard is silence.
Do not be misled -- I am not so antagonistic to think that our generation is devoid of dedicated people. I'll be the first to declare that there exist individuals with this passion, who do manage to impact society. But individuals are only as powerful as their ability to inspire change in society at large. And as a whole, our generation has yet to make a statement. There are enough issues and enough injustice in this world to unite our voice, so where is it? And more importantly, what will we say?
