Student activism alive at the Sorbonne
Published: 03/12/2009
PARIS – The riot police were out in force. Dressed in full body armor like baseball catchers, toting batons and tear gas canisters, dozens of them silently stood guard on the street outside the Sorbonne.
Waving cameras and microphones in the faces of campus administrators, the media were crowding the front gates of the famed campus of the University of Paris.
And locked inside were roughly 200 students, blockading the doors and staging an expression of dissent at President Nicholas Sarkozy’s recent plans to cut funding for higher education.
Civil Disobedience is nothing new at the Sorbonne. The campus, located in Paris’ Left Bank and not far from the meandering promenades of the Seine River, was the heart of the May 1968 student protests. This notorious general strike and lock-in, aimed at employment deficits and harsh government crackdowns on leftist groups, nearly forced then-President Charles De Gaulle from power, setting a new precedent for student activists worldwide.
But unlike the calls for freedom of expression that took place here in the ‘60s, I had a front-row view to the spectacle of protest that remains as strong as ever today in Paris.
Staying at a friend’s apartment on Rue Saint Jacques, near the more passive Sciences Po University, I got my initial view of French college students. Most of the undergraduates at Sciences Po reminded me of characters from Wes Anderson’s movie, "Rushmore.” Not really the type you would expect to overthrow a government.
But nowhere was the French students’ passion for political involvement more evident than at the Sorbonne. After getting word that a protest was underway, we approached the university amid tell-tale signs. Trucks of riot control officers suiting up. News vans and crowds of spectators. At the university entrance, forcefully barred doors proclaimed there would be no class today. Locals said that the students had locked themselves inside, blockading the doors with tables and chairs.
The riot police seemed content to stand outside and look intimidating, and no student leaders were making any significant calls for rebellion when we arrived. Nevertheless, the event forced me look at today’s American student activists with a fresh perspective.
French students are not alone in their passion for social dissent. While American universities may have lost the spark of past college movements, Barcelona has seen its share.
My first week in Spain, I witnessed a demonstration of more than 50,000 people, many of them students, marching against the recent Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip and filling the City Center of Plaza Catalunya with fierce shouting and signs.
Healthy social dissent is the lifeblood of any democracy. Where would America be without the Boston Tea Party? College students have always been at the forefront of this freedom of speech, but much of that fire seems to have gone out at American universities today, particularly WSU.
Young Democrats, College Republicans and many more passionate campus groups, armed with infinite colored leaflets, always seemed to deter my route to class on the Glenn Terrell Mall. While I’ll commend those students for their efforts to be active citizens, their leaflets usually end up in the trash, and I wonder if their messages are truly being heard. And those negligible political efforts don’t seem much compared to what I witnessed at the Sorbonne.
Blocking the doors of Todd Hall with tables and chanting slogans of “freedom for education” may be going overboard, but in times of such political and economic stress, American students, regardless of their political leanings, could take a note from our European counterparts and ensure that our voices are heard loud and clear.
http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/28094
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