I was in New York over the weekend, and on a trip to The Strand in Union Square I overheard some people talking about the student protest at nearby NYU. I had no idea there was student protest going on, and wouldn’t care except now I’ve seen the hilarious YouTube footage. As the students are essentially surrounded by cops for forcibly occupying a building at a private insitution, they’re insisting — “We’re using democratic process here, I don’t know if you guys understand that” and then as the cops are flooding in they’re still insisting, “This is a student free space. You may not come in here.”
Of course, I’m laughing here in part because it seems like a a saner response than crying. Watching the video linked above made me feel, well, what’s the opposite of nostalgia? As for my own personal forays into student politics as part of the Oregon Commentator at the University of Oregon, I saw my share of sit-ins. But mostly, I spent years going after Ralph Nader’s Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) which were clearly involved in a scheme violating reams of tax code by taking tuition money from public universities and using it lobby for a variety of leftist causes. The kids involved in PIRGs were so caught up in their own self-importance that it never occurred to them that what they were doing was illegal and unjust. After graduating I put away student politics, but the recent election of a former student PIRG organizer as President has also served as an ugly reminder of those days. It seems that indoctrinating undergraduates with inane radicalism really does have consequences.