We must realize the power of our voices

Things have changed. Students have changed. In many instances, students feel alienated from the political process. Collectively student actions such as protest and demonstrations don’t seem to occur as frequently these days. At least no here at our university.
Part of the reason for this may be that there are fewer passionate issues to mobilize around, but what better than the current situation of our nation. The most popular reason why today’s students don’t take action is simply that they don’t care.
I believe that this is a fallacy. Students do care about many issues, but simply lack the motivation to organize and make changes.
We have laid down far too long and because of this, we have not defined ourselves beyond the title of ” Generation X.”
Even though the US is on the verge of war, efforts opposing war are nothing like those protest efforts for Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War.
It seems that for students it is harder to develop a united front.
Visualize the movement against the Vietnam War. What do you see? Hippies with daisies in their long, unwashed hair yelling “Baby killers!” as they spit on clean-cut veterans just back from Vietnam?
College students in tattered jeans, with picket signs saying “make love not war” staging a sit-in to avoid the draft? A mob of chanting demonstrators burning an American flag. That’s what we’re supposed to see, and that’s what Americans should see today when they visualize the antiwar movement.
Or perhaps imagine being there with non-violent protester during the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks and whites united in a massive front to fight the oppression of African Americans in the United States. Fighting for equal rights. A crowd of demonstrators arm in arm singing “We Shall Overcome.”
A crowded diner in Birmingham, Alabama- a group of non-violent protesters sitting at a lunch counter, to stand up for racial separation.
What has happen to us? Have we accepted the title of “Generation X?” Here we are faced with a situation where we can either lay down and accept what is given to us, or we can join in a united front to change a piece of American society that we will soon be totally responsible for. Yet, we do very little.
History shows that students can make a difference.
We have loss our passion for the issues. Or maybe it is better said that the passion and flare for protest and change did not spread from the roots through the branches and leaves of our generation. We have been silenced.
There was a time in America where the scope of the first amendment went further than the freedom of free speech. Our predecessors believed and practiced the freedom to petition, the freedom of peaceful assembly, and the freedom of press.
It is truly unfortunate that we have become a generation that accepts whatever hand fate deals to us.
For a demographic predominately known as a generation of slackers, it can be shown that people who are receiving a college education are striving for an even higher education- a global education that affects everyone, in every town, class, and race.
There is reason to believe, however, that students may be losing some of the authority that they once had, and this indicates that a loss of student voice leads to a loss of student power, but things don’t have to be this way. We can fight, protest, petition, and demonstrate for the things that we feel are wrong. It shouldn’t take a war for us as students to realize that we have the power to change things. Whether on a small scale or on a large, change depends on us, and all we have to do is speak up, but not in isolated voices, in a united voice that can be heard by those that will make the changes.