Blame the Prof. I know I do.

All this student unrest on various college campuses brings me back...ahhhhh the early 1990's

Back in my undergrad days me and all the other poly sci majors at Wesley College were student activists. Don't be impressed, in 1993 the poly sci department had two professors and a dozen students. Needless to say we were a tight nit group. Where all friends on FB now.

We were Generation X, don't you know, and pretty apathetic. Its not that we didn't care, we all saw what was wrong with Wesley College in 1993, its just that we didn't see what good we could do.

Our mentor, the chair of the department spent 1992 and 1993 trying to talk us into taking action. Now, as for Tony, the chair, let's talk about him. Visually, I want you to picture Mr. Van Driesen from Beavis and Butthead. There you go. I'm not making this up. Tony wore a collard shirt and blazer though. He was from Idaho, a Mormon and had done a hitch in the army and followed the Seattle Sea Hawks.

We could never pin down Tony's politics. He was somewhere left, we knew that, but he insisted he wasn't a socialist. Tony had all the cynicism of an early '90s baby boomer but there was a sense of hope, a belief in what people could do. I know now that politically he was something like George Orwell, a democratic socialist who believed in freedom, and freedom of speech. He hated Wesley College's administration.

Now, remember, the poly sci students were a tight knit group. We usually attended class in what had been the drawing room of an old Victorian house (sometimes Tony would take us to the local dive). Here Tony spent a fair amount of class time talking to us about trying to change things on campus. It wasn't of the 'you can make a difference, maaaaan...' variety. That wasn't Tony. He wasn't an ex-hippie, he was a concerned professor. By the fall of '93 Tony had gotten me, Paul, Ben, Lorna, Alfonso, Martel, Chris, and a few others to take an interest in what was happening. Ben and I won a seat on the Student Government Association, we wrote newspaper editorials. When that wasn't enough we founded our own newspaper. Paul ran for SGA president. We raised a little hell. The admin hated us. After I wrote a critical editorial the college president called me into his office and berated me. Bastard.

I don't think we changed anything but we sure caused trouble.

So I think its pretty obvious that most of the student trouble at Mizzou, Yale, Amherst, etc etc is being stoked by the professors. I'm a college professor myself. These kids wouldn't put down their phones if you paid them. Threaten them all you want, it won't do any good. Behind all this trouble is some gray haired prof.