How Student Radicals Can Be Relevant: Athens, OH SDS Scores Victories -- Sealed with a Pinkie-Swear

Demonstrators at Indonesian Consulate, NY Photo: www.etan.org

The Ohio University (OU) campus has been rocked by a decidedly anti-democratic, unaccountable administration, pushing unpopular policies without any student input whatsoever. They've designated "free speech" zones on campus (in other words, they've attempted to ban free speech everywhere else) in order to shut out discourse and protest.

The administration imposed arbitrary fees on popular student parties, suddenly cut varsity sports teams, and gave themselves indulgent pay bonuses. This has left students feeling alienated and without control of their college. Ohio University is being run like a corporation rather than an educational institution.

SDS stood up to advocate for student syndicalism (democratically self-managed universities) and built an impressive coalition in the process. The SDS free speech demonstration on February 2, 2007 was attended not just by activists, but students most activist groups wouldn't think to try to organize, including athletes and fraternity members.

I was invited to come to OU in Athens by their SDS chapter, and the umbrella activist group InterAct, to do workshops, trainings, and other action support, both as an SDSer and also as an organizer from Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Trainings with SDS ranged from sustainable organization building to campaign strategy, while I got to connect with InterAct about collaborating on a few RAN-related projects including shutting down a corporation called TXU, which is building dirty coal-fired power plants (but that is a separate article).

We awoke the morning of the demo to a new blanket of snow coating the campus. It was beautiful. We met in a nearby coffee shop early to tie up loose ends. Somehow a PBS news crew found us an hour early and interviewed Olivia and Sarah, two of the organizers.

The snow was falling as students gathered around the civil war monument -- an area not in a university-designated "free speech" zone. A student read the plaque outside the monument, which invoked liberties that we're supposed to have in this country, and about 150 students gathered around the SDS banner hanging from the monument.

Chanting Can Be Fun

Initially, energy seemed low. Some folks didn't even want to chant. I soon realized this was a good thing; about 90% of the people there had likely never been to a demonstration before. Despite the lack of racial diversity, in other respects the diversity of students there was staggering. SDS managed to mobilize a wide cross section of campus, including students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds, people who would have never come out to a demonstration if it weren't for Athens SDS' strategy to emphasize relevance.

After the president of the Graduate Student Union spoke, SDSer Will Klatt gave a speech about the corporatization of our universities. I was invited to speak about "free speech" zones, after which I convinced folks that chanting can be fun (and it doesn't make you a hippie).

Rosemary Esch announced SDS' demands on the university administration, including an elimination of the free speech zones, consultation about decisions affecting students, and a timely response to the letter the demonstrators would deliver to the administration.

People were fired up and marched to the president's office. Energy was high, people were dancing and chanting and whoopin' and hollerin'. We reached the building, met the chief of police, and demanded entrance. We got it.

Engage, Activate, Dance

The cop actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Most of his background in stopping "civil disturbances" had been shutting down KKK rallies, so he seemed pretty down with the idea that we were actually trying to do something positive. It's always important to remember to try to get inside the head of the police if you confront them -- on campuses at least, they usually just don't want to look bad in front of their bosses. If you can challenge their power and authority and get what you want, while still making it so they can play it off to their superiors like they had control over the situation, then not only do you win and alter the power dynamics, but you usually eliminate the chance of arrest.

When we found out the president was in hiding, we decided to have a spokescouncil to see what to do next. Strategically, it was useful for a lot of reasons. Not only did we want to democratically decide what to do next, but it helped all the participants in the demo, people with very different backgrounds and experience levels in activism, feel ownership over the march. Part of the strategy of the demo was to engage and activate people as much as possible.

We danced. We went inside the new student building and shook things up. We tracked down the Dean. A student issued the demands. And the Dean actually pinkie-swore Sarah that they would be responded to by the president before the deadline that SDS issued.

We then decided to march to a meeting of "Vision Ohio," where administrators were proposing additions for the campus to business leaders, without student input. The cop asked us to not be disruptive, and we thought that was appropriate. We pinkie-swore that we wouldn't, and we kept our end of the bargain. Tactically, it was a great move, because during any action you need to make sure to exit on your own terms. If we had ended up getting kicked out it wouldn't have been useful to us at all. It might have disheartened all the new folks involved. Instead we just ate all the cookies at the Vision Ohio meeting and did interviews with lots of press.

Participatory Strategy

Like I said, SDS is trying to be relevant. It's actually quite a revolutionary thing to do, given how most "radical" groups on campuses are content to build exclusionary, elitist subcultures and regress into them (and then wonder why all the other students are "apathetic"). We announced that we were going to have a strategy session workshop, and it wasn't just for SDS - everyone was invited to come shape SDS' strategy.

I was asked to facilitate the training/workshop. Some of the best ideas came from people who had not only never thought strategically before, but had never thought about activism before, period. In the session we identified what it means to strategize campaigns.

We differentiated between campaigning for change and simply protesting for it, and between specific goals, a broader vision, and a random assortment of tactics. We identified power holders in the administration, how they were related to other power holders, what their points of weakness were, and how to leverage our own power to focus on them.

We identified different kinds of tactics, how to build and escalate them, and brainstormed how to use them to connect with allies, be accountable to other students and student groups, build power, and win concrete victories each step of the way.

I left the strategy session feeling like Athens SDS is experimenting with models of organizing that are pretty new for our generation. The push for genuine participation by the general student body in their strategy, indeed, thinking strategically at all, is a welcome change. The decision to be positive, to build up rather than tear down, and to be open to "non-activist" voices, is a testimony to the sophistication of their activism.

Until we can organize students in their own interest as students, we will be stuck in the thoughtlessness of doing self-congratulatory actions simply to "piss people off." OU activists are realizing that being radical is about strategy, vision and goals, about being serious, grounded, thoughtful, and long-term. Often times young radicals get confused, thinking that tactics themselves can be radical or not. Tactics are only radical insofar as they are strategic, and often "fucking shit up" is the clear road to marginalization and failure. Athens SDS is building power on campus for real, being relevant for real, and being in it for the long haul. And they are doing it with concrete victories. Nothing builds a movement like winning.

We live in a generation of cynicism. It's not "apathy" so much as it's grounded in an assessment that "we don't have the power to make change." When we organize on campus and win -- we show people that we can be powerful, that we can make change. That is often a radicalizing process. That's the process that I saw in Athens, Ohio. While SDS chapters across the country are thinking about how they can radicalize their campuses, Athens is providing a useful (if situation-specific) model.

As is important with every victory, it's crucial to celebrate. So after the punk rock dance party, activists were going to head over to the fraternity house, to which everyone was invited by a fraternity member in the march. Unlikely alliances indeed!

Update February, 2008: Athens SDS reports that while negotiations continue with OU to finalize new policies, the University has stopped enforcing the "free speech zone" rules. SDS continues to organize.

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