TRANSFORMATION: Student Activism

Student activism

Student activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. Although often focused on schools, curriculum, and educational funding, student groups have influenced greater political events.^[1]

Modern student activist movements vary widely in subject, size, and success, with all kinds of students in all kinds of educational settings participating, including public and private school students; elementary, middle, senior, undergraduate, and graduate students; and all races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives.^[2] Some student protests focus on the internal affairs of a specific institution; others focus on broader issues such as a war or dictatorship. Likewise, some student protests focus on an institution's impact on the world, such as a disinvestment campaign, while others may focus on a regional or national policy's impact on the institution, such as a campaign against government education policy. Although student activism is commonly associated with left-wing politics, right-wing student movements are not uncommon; for example, large student movements fought on both sides of the apartheid struggle in South Africa.^[3]

Student activism at the university level is nearly as old as the university itself. Students in Paris and Bologna staged collective actions as early as the 13th century, chiefly over town and gown issues.^[4] Student protests over broader political issues also have a long pedigree. In Joseon Dynasty Korea, 150 Sungkyunkwan students staged an unprecedented remonstration against the king in 1519 over the Kimyo purge.^[5]

Now a new movement, rooted in pan-African rhetoric and assertions of black pride, has announced itself. The movement has been fueled, in part, by rising numbers of black students on campuses where the values of the country’s new, supposedly non-racial, non-sexist democracy has chafed against antiquated architecture that celebrates former oppressors.

Student leaders had complained for years about testing and admission standards that translated into just over 23 percent of the student body being black South African when black South Africans constitute nearly 80 percent of the country’s population (31 percent of the student body are white South Africans and 18 percent international students, many of them blacks from elsewhere in Africa).* Even worse was the proportion of black South African professors—only five out of 223 in 2013 according to university figures.

“We need a curriculum that’s Afrocentric,” Samoya explained. “We’re sick of being taught Eurocentric ideology when there’s plenty of perfectly good Afrocentric scholarship on the continent. We don’t want a European university in Africa. We want a world-class African university in Africa.”