It wasn't until I finally became a Princeton student that I realized that Take Back the Night and Fashion Speaks are what passes for activism on this campus. Princetonians walking around in T-shirts emblazoned with Andy Warhol lips is about as confrontational as we get. Campaigns to educate, cooperate and cajole are stand-ins for protests, walk-outs and hunger strikes that generally come to mind when one thinks of "campus activism."
Then again, 2008 isn't 1968. Today's college students don't face conscription. As a whole, we are more pragmatic and less idealistic. But even as campus activism decreases nationwide, Princeton's brand of outreach is distinctively politically correct. In its non-confrontational way, our activism ultimately illuminates the complacency and non-confrontational culture of Princeton's undergraduate student body.
This isn't to say that Princeton students are disengaged. Indeed, we are well-informed, supporting causes like the Global AIDS Campaign and Cancer Awareness. But that support normally comes in the form of little flags on the North Lawn of Frist Campus Center, panel discussions and the occasional pamphlet. After all, who doesn't support ending AIDS and cancer? These symbolic demonstrations promote awareness and have become mainstream, annual, social events. I look forward to getting a new pink T-shirt each year and bonding with friends who sport their red ribbons.
Meanwhile, activism at other schools still tackles politically charged, less mainstream and more controversial issues. At Stanford, students organized a divestment campaign from Israel. Yale's Undergraduate Organizing Committee stages protests in favor of labor unions and financial aid, among other things. When leaders of the citizens' border control group, The Minutemen, spoke at Columbia, students stormed the stage and forced the speaker off. To protest the Western slant of the core curriculum, Columbia students held a hunger strike. When Princeton had controversial speakers like David Horowitz of anti-professor fame or John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of ‘The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," there was some discussion but no organized activism.
The reaction to our few outspoken protests sheds light on why there are so few in the first place. The most well-known, most discussed demonstrations in recent memory are the Princeton Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)'s demonstrations in support of animal rights. The controversy that followed each PAWS demonstration was also brief and non-confrontational. PAWS vice president Alex Barnard '09 told me there wasn't enough controversy. "We thought people would be really hostile to us, being reactionary to stuff like activism," he said. If the organizers of such demonstrations don't think they are being heard, then of course there won't be any more protests.
The antagonism toward student protests seems to come from students themselves. Yes, there are requirements to file protests and demonstrations first with the office of the dean of students before proceeding, but organizers have rare problems on that front. Barnard said that Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne gave him full permission to stage a PAWS demonstration that required much fake blood just weeks after the tragedy at Virginia Tech. But when Barnard's roommate Jordan Bubin '09 attempted to organize a protest against water-boarding with Princeton's Amnesty International, he was met with hesitation by Amnesty, which claimed that the group preferred to write petitions and letters.
There are several likely reasons for Princeton's culture of non-confrontation. Compared to other schools of its caliber, Princeton is relatively small, so anyone who dares to lead a protest risks greater exposure. We also don't have a specific club like Yale's for activism. Unlike Columbia, Princeton doesn't have a deeply ingrained history of activism.
But Princeton's non-confrontational style also reflects the fact that Princeton students are simply more conservative (note the small "c") than their peers. We seem to choose words over actions, reason over rashness. Perhaps this caution comes out of the need not to offend lest someone - say, an employer - uncovers a checkered history of activism. After all, you can't list "getting arrested at a protest" on a resume.
I am no exception. As a newly admitted pre-frosh, I was excited by the Frist Fillibuster and thought that Princeton would offer plenty more similar opportunities. Now, as an officer of College Democrats, I find myself opposing aggressive approaches like door-to-door operations by reasoning that they turn people off.
Even if friendliness is the more responsible approach, it's too bad that students who want to voice their opinion via a demonstration or protest have a limited audience. When non-confrontational activism is the mainstream, is it really activism at all?
Cindy Hong is a Wilson School major from Princeton, N.J. She can be reached at cindyh@princeton.edu.
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