Harry Targ
Helping Students Adjust
“It’s clear
that today’s young people…are more fragile in some ways. ….They seem to be a little less ready, a little less
prepared for difficulty and setbacks
than earlier generations. And so, yes if we can do something that enhances
their resilience and all this that I just talked about, I think it’s our responsibility to do that,” Purdue
President Mitch Daniels quoted in Joseph Ching, “Student Success Initiative to
Launch: Program Tailored to Tackle Gen Stressors,” Purdue Exponent,
October 17, 2019.
The Vice
Provost of Student Life, Beth McCuskey,
the article reported, announced a new program to facilitate student resilience
called “”Steps to Leap,” which would help students respond to stresses in
college and beyond building “lifelong skills in the area of well-being and
resiliency.” This program would coordinate various university programs,
including curricula, to address “five core pillars of life skills:”
“well-being, leadership and professional development, impact, networks, and
grit.” Daniels added that students today were having more severe mental
problems than in years past.
The article
then cited a college senior who had been researching student stresses for the
new Steps to Leaps program. He suggested that generation Z students were too
impatient; they expected change to occur immediately, not realizing that change
takes “one step at a time.” He claimed Zers were reticent to network and
rejected leadership as an hierarchical concept.
In a
subsequent article announcing the program’s beginning, a student was quoted as
saying that it was good to know that Purdue was supporting them in their
endeavors: “Purdue has your back.” (Sean Murley, “Students Excited About ‘Steps
to Leaps,’ Purdue Exponent, October 31, 2019).
Student Protests
One week
later, a group of students protested an incident in which a pharmacy refused to
sell a cold product to a student because he used his Puerto Rican driver’s license as an ID, thus
in the clerk’s mind, signifying that he was not a US citizen. A spokesperson
from the pharmaceutical company apologized for the incident. But given
experiences of discrimination on campus some students urged Purdue to issue a
public statement condemning all forms of discrimination. Their demands were
ignored. A Ph.D student protestor suggested that “Purdue is complicit in this
case. Students perceive, and rightly so,
that the university’s diversity statements are mere words stated to give the
illusion of anti-discriminatory policies.” (Dave Bangert, “Students Are Demanding
That Daniels Denounce CVS Incident, Journal and Courier, November 8,
2019.
The
particular incident, for which the company apologized, is not the issue.
Students at Purdue University have for a long time raised concerns about racist
incidents on campus. Over the last three years alt-right flyers with coded Nazi
symbols have appeared on campus. Earlier, in December, 2014, students mobilized
to protest the killing of an unarmed African-American man by a police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri. Demonstrators urged then that the Purdue administration address
racial profiling and harassment on the campus . University spokespersons refused
to publicly reiterate the institution’s stated commitment to oppose
discrimination wherever it occurs.
Over the
last several years, Purdue University reaction to student protest seems to
contradict the claim that students “have the university’s back.” Rather Steps
to Leaps, as described, seems to be a program designed to train students to
adjust to a world with serious problems. And, if one reads between the lines,
the Steps to Leap program regards student protest as part of the problem, not
the solution. However, data would indicate a dramatic increase in youth protest
in the United States and all across the globe. Why? Because of the threat to
the physical survival of the planet, growing inequality in wealth and income
and abject poverty, racism and sexism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, war, and
the threat of violence in public spaces, including schools.
In short, the
Steps to Leaps program is based on unfounded generalizations about the
inadequate adaptability of Generation Zers to a complex world, and an
assumption that protest and demands for radical change represent an impatience
that is a sign of mental stress and immaturity. Again it is assumed that stress
and “immaturity” is greater in this cohort of students than in prior periods
(Students in the 1960s were characterized in similar ways as Steps to Leaps
today).
Generation Zers Are Taking the
Lead for Social Change
In contradistinction
to the implicit message of Steps to Leaps, protest can be seen as a
manifestation of a profound commitment of Generation Zers to the project of
transforming a world that is being destroyed by fossil fuels, endemic violence and
racism. A year ago I wrote an essay about the skillful and committed
mobilization of young people who had experienced gun violence at the Parkland
High School in Florida. It argued that educators and the broader public should support
movements for change initiated by students rather than ignore them. These
mobilizations are not signs of immaturity or lack of “grit” but perhaps commitment,
passion, and intellect.
I wrote then
(“What Gives Me Hope About This ‘Enough is Enough’ Movement,” Diary of a Heartland Radical, March 25,
2018):
“While I
have had bursts of enthusiasm before when women marched for their rights,
masses mobilized against war, and many stepped up to say no to police violence
and mass incarceration, I was touched emotionally even more this time around.
On reflection, I think, my optimism, my interest in being involved, and my
sense of purpose has been energized by several features of this new movement.
First, this
movement was not organized around “identities.” While the student organizers of
the rally purposefully incorporated how people of color, women, and lower
income students experience violence differently in their lives, the central
focus was on the general issues of guns and gun violence. Individual youth
organizers then spoke from their own experiences.
Second, the
students, again consciously, avoided all sectarianism. While there were clear
messages about profit-making corporations, lobby groups, self-serving elected
officials, and the uses to which elections were put, they did not explicitly
address the role of capitalism and class, race, and gender. They made it clear
that elections matter. They avoided the debate about whether people should support
one or the other of the major political parties or build a third party. They
had organized in 800 cities and towns to say “Enough is Enough” about gun
violence, not to raise issues of theory and practice that often divide older
activists.
Third, the students
had a direct, immediate issue-oriented agenda; that is the regulation of the
ownership, sale, and use of firearms in society. Although spokespersons from
Parkland and elsewhere beautifully grounded their advocacy in broader systemic,
structural arguments about why they are mobilizing, they presented a modest but
significant set of policy goals that they wished to achieve.
Fourth, the
young people who organized the marches and rallies presented a practical plan
to achieve their immediate goals. They urged those who were old enough to vote,
to do so in the 2018 elections. Those who were going to become of voting age,
they proposed, should register to vote. And all young people should encourage
others to register and vote.
Fifth, all
young people were urged to participate in the electoral arena. Activists called
on youth to establish litmus tests for each candidate from local to national
office on gun issues. And, where possible, participants in rallies were urged
to run for office. And young people were advised to reject the argument that
“you are just a kid… you don’t have the experience or knowledge to hold public
office.”
Sixth, all the
emerging youth spokespersons from Parkland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere
made it clear that they were not leaders in the traditional sense but
facilitators of an organically charged mass movement. All students from
Parkland who were interviewed indicated that they were not speaking for and
about themselves. They saw themselves as part of a generation that is demanding
the right to be free of the threat of being a target of violent death.
Seventh,
spokespersons for this mass mobilization promise that “this is just the
beginning.” One gets the sense from the passion, the collective solidarity, the
proposed plan of action, and the specific goals articulated all across the
country that a new movement has been born. This movement might transform itself
from its singular commitment to controlling gun violence to a broad-based
social movement for justice and democracy.
These “Generation Zers” will
continue to build from their extraordinary uprising. For now they have set
themselves and the nation on a new path that should give us hope and direction.”
