Politics of Frustration

IT USED TO BE divestment. Now it's squash courts.

More than 100 Harvard Law School students have pledged not to give any money to their soon to be alma mater. That means not one penny ever--their rallying cry is an appropriately nihilistic N.O.P.E.

The protesters are not just unhappy with the university's investment policy. For though Harvard's investment policy is part of the problem, there is much more to it than that.

There is, for example, the decrepit state of Hemenway Gym. These protesters are not just a group of anti-administration renegades; they have a cause: they want their squash courts cleaned up. Yes, we've stooped that low. Our generation will honestly protest the sorry state of its squash courts.

However, we should not be too quick to write these protesters off as just another band of yuppies. There is more to their movement than pure selfishness.

THE PROTEST is more theraputic than activist. If the students really wanted to increase minority enrollment, they would pledge to make all donations to a fund devoted to sponsoring scholarships for minorities. If they wanted to attack investments in South Africa, they would set up a fund similar to the Endowment for Divestiture. And if they wanted to clean up their squash courts, they'd do what every good alumnus does--donate a new gym.

What these students are really angry at is themselves for buying into a system they believe is wrong. If you don't know what to do, go to law school. And so they went. But each step on the way to Harvard Law took them farther away from themselves.

Stuck with the prospect of being part of the system, they are vainly attempting to disassociate themselves from it. They are just plain unhappy--about apartheid, about gym maintenance and about their inevitable job on Wall Street. What's important to notice is the apparent equivalence all these complaints share. In a cynical world, all evils are equally important because everything is equally irrelevant. It's all the same, and they want us to know it.

Presumably, these law students would recognize the inconsistency of their actions and their goals, if their goals were actually the ones they are trumpetting. Confusion and frustration, not concern and compassion, are the motivating factors here. The real message of N.O.P.E. follows this line: since I'm not happy after three years of your school, I'm going to make as much money as possible and then not give you any.

Unable to conceive of changing Harvard Law School, they deal with it at its lowest level. If you will treat us as no more than tuition checks, the students say, we will treat you as nothing but a money-making business. But in an effort to denigrate the institution, they denigrate themselves. Instead of humanizing the institution, they dehumanize themselves.

The N.O.P.E. protest represents that stand of defeatism and resignation which we all must fight against. Our institutions, in this case Harvard Law School, are partly responsible for this mindset. At times they seem so uncaring they can make us feel incapable of changing them. Yet institutions rarely invite change; they must be made to change.

There is something desperate about the actions these Harvard Law students took. Unhappy with the atmosphere of their school, they tried to express their dissatisfaction, but the only way they knew to do this was to vow to use the institution for all it was worth. This world requires more from us all than such shallow cynicism.