By Christian Cullen, Staff Writer

Growing up, I vividly remember seeing a History Channel documentary about the 1960s. It was a time of social strife and intense protests. A particular focus was on protests at college campuses as the Vietnam War lit a fuse that burned brightly around the country. Colleges like UC Berkeley became centers of resistance. 

A famous moment from the Vietnam War protests is the Kent State shooting committed by the National Guard; while we remember this moment, rightly, for the National Guard’s egregious actions, we ought not to forget they were there to face protestors who were our age. 

When we look back at this era, college was less about learning and more about making your voice heard. The intersection between the college student and the protestor is one I expected to see more of at Xavier when I got to campus. However, it seems to be a stereotype that no longer applies.

This points toward a bigger issue within our generation: We do not know how to protest or engage in direct social action. Think back to a few years ago. Remember Blackout Tuesday, where people posted black squares on Instagram in a supposed show of solidarity. Think of how many infographics you could scroll through on people’s stories, taking incredibly complex issues and shortening it into content we feel like we can handle. Instead of the burden of respecting an issue and diving into the topic, we can satiate our attention span with a five-slide Instagram post that somehow could summarize it all at once. We do not protest in-person anymore, but instead see our reposting and actions on social media as meeting the need for social change. 

The collapse of the American protester can be viewed directly on college campuses. I think during my three years at Xavier, there have been three, maybe four protests or vigils on campus, most of which were sparsely attended. We have become content to use content as our primary means of raising our voices at the establishment. Think of how much has gone wrong in the world this year. War in the Middle East, an economic system made to only benefit towards the rich, continued police brutality and a deeper fear about the slide toward authoritarianism in the United States. 

Now compare that to student action at Xavier. Not people posting about those issues, but instead taking concrete steps to work to solve those issues. You can post as much as you want; social media posts pale at the sight of those marching for justice. 

Here are a few examples. The one I focus on is in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Without going into the whole history, the situation at this convention was tense as younger protestors wanted a candidate that would strive to end the war in Vietnam. At these protests in Chicago, multiple artists showed up to sing and support the cause. It is also worth noting that one of the major organizers of the protests in the city was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). 

Try to imagine a moment like this in our country today. Could you envision a national group of college students banding together under the same protest banner? Could you envision a protest concert today? I just simply do not see it. Too much of our lives have gone to the online world for it to happen. 

There is a final barrier to campus political engagement to discuss: Administrative bureaucracy. Think back to the SDS. They did not have to fill out forms or adhere to university guidelines for their direct action. It was a student organization that operated as an independent entity which gave it a much greater ability to achieve social change. Rather than spending time determining if their events would fit university guidelines or if legal departments would object to their actions, they engaged in a politically charged and changing world in their own way. 

The culture around our generation has fostered a social media sphere that allows us to feel comfortable with our foray into uncomfortable topics. At the same time, college administrations have induced stricter guidelines for how we can attempt to use our voices on their campuses. The social media aspect has been more explicit, while the bureaucratic behind-the-scenes work has been much more subtle. For the most part, the graduating classes of our era have been content to stamp their voices on Instagram; those who aren’t content with just that run into a maze of rules and regulations that strangle the original message out. 

We often hear of the Xavier bubble when talking about our relationship with the surrounding neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Norwood. A further extension may be our insulation from the variety of events in the world that require us to speak out. Let your voices be a little bit louder than a “like” on Instagram or a retweet on X.