Spring Break
Think before you protest
by Hillel Buechler
Op-Ed | 1/27/09
Posted online at 1:23 AM EST on 1/27/09
There's been a lot of chatter about Thursday's episode outside Olin-Sang, where students staged a protest in response to the restricted emergency faculty meeting. Surprisingly, most of this talk gives too much credit to the student activists, casting them as heroically defiant by rising up and making a major point to the University.
In reality, the "student activists" or "organizers" or "social justice seekers," whatever you wish to call them, failed to accomplish anything substantial. They failed to create an effective protest situation, thereby failing to let the University know that students absolutely must be a part of this process and not just an afterthought-a point that desperately needed to be made. It's time for Brandeis activists to engage in concrete action.
I was at this alleged protest. Initially, there was discussion among the eight or nine students assembled outside Olin-Sang of how to get the most people to the demonstration. They started frantically calling and text messaging all the Brandeisians in their cell phones. There was some urgent Innermost Parts blogging as well.
By the time some classes emptied and refilled in Olin-Sang around 4 p.m., students had posted flyers around the first-floor hallway of Olin-Sang. There were a bunch of clever phrases; a standard, pertinent Louis Brandeis quotation, "Sunlight is the best of disinfectants"; and, of course, plenty of exclamation points. But there was no one actually protesting.
In fact, there were no protesters outside Olin-Sang, either. The only student protesters were those standing around in the foyer outside of the Olin-Sang Auditorium, and there were only 20 of them.
I asked several students, unaffiliated with the protest, who were passing through Olin-Sang if they knew whether anything was happening. None did.
At the height of this protest, I counted 30 students, including the original organizers. When I asked one organizer, Lev Hirschhorn '11, how he felt the protest was shaping up, he told me that "this is a demonstration showing that students want to be a part of the discussion." The language of a large student protest was gone. This was just some demonstration.
In reality, the "student activists" or "organizers" or "social justice seekers," whatever you wish to call them, failed to accomplish anything substantial. They failed to create an effective protest situation, thereby failing to let the University know that students absolutely must be a part of this process and not just an afterthought-a point that desperately needed to be made. It's time for Brandeis activists to engage in concrete action.
I was at this alleged protest. Initially, there was discussion among the eight or nine students assembled outside Olin-Sang of how to get the most people to the demonstration. They started frantically calling and text messaging all the Brandeisians in their cell phones. There was some urgent Innermost Parts blogging as well.
By the time some classes emptied and refilled in Olin-Sang around 4 p.m., students had posted flyers around the first-floor hallway of Olin-Sang. There were a bunch of clever phrases; a standard, pertinent Louis Brandeis quotation, "Sunlight is the best of disinfectants"; and, of course, plenty of exclamation points. But there was no one actually protesting.
In fact, there were no protesters outside Olin-Sang, either. The only student protesters were those standing around in the foyer outside of the Olin-Sang Auditorium, and there were only 20 of them.
I asked several students, unaffiliated with the protest, who were passing through Olin-Sang if they knew whether anything was happening. None did.
At the height of this protest, I counted 30 students, including the original organizers. When I asked one organizer, Lev Hirschhorn '11, how he felt the protest was shaping up, he told me that "this is a demonstration showing that students want to be a part of the discussion." The language of a large student protest was gone. This was just some demonstration.
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