Do we still care?

We’ve heard it all before.

Where students of the 60s were out waving banners and saving the world, today’s bright young things are ingesting pot noodles while watching Richard and Judy.

The political and social conscience of our parents’ generation is no longer. Instead, there’s the apathy of a brood motivated only by self interest; and rather than stopping wars or banning the bomb, students are only interested in high street bargains or getting drunk at the union. Young people don’t do politics, don’t vote, can barely tell you who the prime minister is.

Apathy, apathy, apathy. You’d think that if you were to confront a student with the possibility of solving world hunger, he’d just shrug and mumble something inaudible.

The apathy myth

But does the evidence back this up? Well, in the last few months:

1. Student group People and Planet organised Go Green week - the UK's first national student week of action against climate chaos, with events taking place in campuses nationwide.
2. A national day of action for university ethical investment took place in Februaryk organized by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (Caat). Students at UCL, Oxford, Manchester, Lancaster, Nottingham, Warwick and Newcastle took part in a variety of activities to protest their universities’ links with the arms trade.
3. A group of students named ‘The Student Climate Project’ started its travels round the country, putting on street theatre and striking up conversations with passers-by in order to spread its ‘radical climate message’.
4. Students nationwide slept outside on campuses on a decidedly inclement March night to raise awareness of Amnesty International’s “Still Human, Still Here” campaign which shows solidarity with rejected asylum seekers.

Shock! Horror! Student gets up before midday and engages with issues! So why does the old, and frankly annoying, stereotype still exist?

To an extent, it’s because the banner-waving has all but stopped. The style of campaigning has changed and single issues, not party politics, are what engage students. Many see this as unsurprising. Bradley Day, from the Student Climate Project, points out:

“On the rare occasions there has been a mass uprising of student in recent years, the government has failed to listen to them. The march against the war in Iraq saw a really positive mass political expression with many students on the march, and yet the government completely ignored it and went ahead with the war anyway.”

But the theory that this dissatisfaction with part politics has been replaced with an ‘I’m alright Jack’ mentality doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Campus groups

"the reality was that there was not enough students taking action against climate change. We knew it was up to us to put this right."

So you’re unlikely to come across a library sit-in on campus these days (although, as in the marches against the Iraq War or top-up fees, students aren’t averse to the traditional forms of activism) but smaller, issue-led, awareness-raising events are going strong. Who’s responsible for these activities and events and what form do they take?

There are a large number of organized groups that operate on campuses around the UK. For example there are around 150 student-led People and Planet groups in sixth forms and universities, all acting autonomously, and on occasion together, to raise awareness of environment and development issues. Each group has anything between 15 and 200 members, meaning there are around 20000 students who take part in People and Planet campaigning activities, according to head of campaigns James Lloyd.

Amnesty also has more than 100 individual groups based in campuses around the county, which meet at least once a week to campaign and take action according to Amnesty’s human rights agenda. There is also a network of groups to organise coordinated events - the Student Action Network. (Amnesty even holds a free two-day event every year to teach campaigning and activism skills to members of student groups.)

And the Student Climate Project was formed by a group of students who were passionate about making stopping climate change a priority among the university population.

Says the group’s Bradley Day:

“[When the group started] the somewhat depressing reality was that there was simply not enough students taking action against climate change to combat the immensity of the crisis. We knew it was up to us…to put this right and take action to get others on board.”

Part of its remit then, as well as publicising climate change among the population in general, is educating students and getting them involved.