Watching, not Making, Harvard History

Although I proudly wear a pin that declares, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat,” and I fervently support free market economics, I worry about my observer status during the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) takeover this past week.

A group of my peers, unified behind a common goal of convincing the University to grant its employees a “living wage,” have come together in a dramatic and symbolic action in the takeover of Massachusetts Hall. Armed with labor demands—as well as bongo drums, tents and makeshift granola bars—these students have garnered enough attention to become a national news story. As the students’ protest escalates, the public figures who have attended the rally—either to support or to condemn the living wage campaign—have become more dramatic and impressive. This list includes the Reverend Peter Gomes, Robert E. Reich Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56 (D, Mass.) and the acclaimed socialist historian Howard Zinn.

Regardless of what actually happens and how the administration chooses to respond to the protest, the takeover of a university building is certainly not a daily occurrence. Even so, the scale of this particular protest is impossible to anticipate and the historical legacy it will leave is just as unpredictable. But that I have chosen to experience passively what has the potential to be monumental history has deeply troubled me. The students engaged in PSLM’s takeover will always have the memory of fighting for a movement in which they truly believe. They also will have had the experience of trying to advance demands against the bureaucracy of the oldest institution of higher education in the nation.

In 1968, my father, too, missed his chance to participate in history. He was then a student at Columbia University during the school’s takeover of an administrative buildings. But when faced with the opportunity to participate, he preferred a passing grade on thermodynamics to an arrest for throwing bricks at policemen. And, thus, in history’s eyes my father is only an observer; the only interest researchers have in his college experience is for background material to pepper their accounts of the 1968 incident. The similarities between my father’s decision and my own make me wonder: Will someone call me 30 years from now asking me what it was like to watch my peers battle the administration?

I won’t deny my desire for posterity. But I want to fight for a cause worthy of historical memory. I can’t convince myself that PSLM’s demands are revolutionary. If they are, I will have been on the outside, without thermodynamics to excuse my participation—just my arrogance. For the moment, I will deny my desire to throw away my conservative bias and run into Mass Hall to support the living wage campaign—for the sake of being a part of history. But as the protest continues and its tactics become increasingly aggressive, it becomes more and more obvious that I am further reduced to the background as just another passive observer who fits squarely with my generation’s reputation for apathy.