The Return of College Protest

The campus protests of the 1960s happened long enough ago that the images filter through in black-and-white, the tint of television newsreels and newspaper photographs back in the day:

Mario Savio, ushering in the Free Speech Movement from atop a police car and exhorting fellow Berkeley students to block the arrest of their friend in the car below. The months-long student strike at San Francisco State, marked by the college president yanking out speaker wires to disrupt a rally. And as the 1970s dawned, the post-Kent State march at UCLA that disintegrated into scores of arrests and 10 injured cops.

Last week's college protests played out in color, and that was not the only difference. There were hundreds of students at various California campuses, generally not thousands, and no arrests. The students' concerns were not profound disputes like the war in Vietnam or the civil rights movement but something more prosaic: The relentlessly rising cost of education.

Tom Hayden, the former California legislator who knows a little about protest, could see the contrast but still found something moving in last week's low-key uprising.

"It's very admirable that they are out there fighting," he said. "It's remarkable that they are still protesting, given the pressure that they are under."

He was speaking of the heightened competitive and economic pressures of college and what those have done to the time in life that is supposed to be open to the occasional protest, well-conceived or not.