Rebels Without a Cause

This past weekend, for the third year in a row, minority student protesters had the poor taste and poor judgment to demonstrate at Junior Parents Weekend events. They walked back and forth in the Science Center, holding up their signs and beating their big drum of oppression. Like the Energizer bunny, they keep going and going and going.

The protesters, drowned out on one occasion by the Harvard University Band, were a walking, yelling self-parody of righteous indignation. When it comes to Harvard, the Coalition's slogan is "It's our party, and we'll cry if we want to." And cry they do, year after year, even when they have no reason to be upset, and many reasons to be pleased.

Examining a flyer distributed by the protesters is guaranteed to provide prolonged chuckles. You'll ask yourself: is this a Lampoon parody, or is it for real? The laughs begin with the high seriousness of the flyer's title: "A Dream Deferred."

To quote Camille Paglia: "Puhleeze!" That these students invoke such a phrase to lend credibility to their whining does a tremendous disservice to their forbears, the men and women who lived through and struggled against the true discrimination of the 1950's and 1960's.

Yet even this presumptuous slogan is not as inappropriate as the "Peculiar Institution" campaign. Last year, the Coalition leaders demonstrated both their insolence and their stupidity when they compared the "plight" of minority students at Harvard to the unspeakable horrors of slavery. To even mention the two in the same breath is to trivialize the experiences of the African-Americans who suffered and died under slavery.

The question remains: why can't these students shut up?

Reading their error-filled flyer makes clear the baseless nature of their complaints. They claim that the University has no tenured female African-American professors, ignoring the recent appointment of Professor Evelyn Brooks Higginobotham. (I'm sure Higginobotham would not be pleased.)

The students claim that despite the Foreign Cultures requirement, whose value they concede, "there are no classes which address the situation of Latinos, Native American and Asian-Americans in American culture."

Time to crack open those course catalogs gathering dust on your shelves, my friends! Look up Anthropology 151, English 90uy, History 1662, History 1664, History 1680, Sociology 60 and Sociology 215--to name just a few of Harvard's many offerings.

Since the aggrieved students can't complain about Harvard having no tenured Latino professors, they have to demand "tenured U.S. Latino professors." Where will is stop? When will they be content?

After Harvard does get the tenured U.S. Latino professor, as it inevitably will, these students will then want a Latino professor of a particular gender, then professors to represent each and every Latin American country. These students want to turn the Faculty of Arts and Sciences into a varitable salad bar. Where are the garbanzo beans?

There are no substantive reasons for minority student protest at Harvard. The real reason for these never-ending protests is that today's liberal students suffer from an identity crisis. They desperately want to see themselves as heirs to both the long-haired, hair-raising protesters of the sixties and the civil rights demonstrators of that same period.

Over the course of history, civilizations in decline have often drawn on some mythological past in order to galvanize their citizens and shore up their diminishing influence. Minority student leaders of today, as the University caves into their every demand, feel the need to restore vitality to their cause.

Consequently, they draw on the ideals, radicalism, and shrillness of the student activists of the 1960's. They hold rallies, they stage protests and they speak out on every occasion. They criticize as insensitive the very institution which, in its benevolence towards minority students, admits Black and Hispanic students at higher rates than white students (despite much lower SAT scores).

The smart students at Harvard Law School realize that the 1960's are over, and that there are better methods for effecting change, such as working within existing channels. Shelby Steele, a conservative Black professor, draws a distinction between "bargainers" and "challengers." The former work together with the rest of society to get what they want. The latter play on white guilt complexes to secure their ridiculous demands.

Failing to follow the law students' path of toning down protest, the protesting undergraduates cling desperately to the era of wasted youth (why yes, that is a double entendre). These pesky protesters just don't know when to quit.

Constantly donning the mantle of victimhood trivializes true suffering, making it harder to recognize real cases of oppression.

Someone should tell the minority student leaders what they really need to hear: "Sit down, you're rocking the boat."