When students wanted the University to sever its ties with the U.S. military in April 1969, 300 of them forcefully took over university Hall.

Last month, when the Minority Student Alliance (MSA) protested the lack of minority faculty and ethnic studies courses, about a dozen students held signs and chanted in front of the Science Center.

Student protests on campus have declined. The confrontational, in your-face demonstrations of the late 1960s have dwindled into small groups of peaceful picketers outside the Science Center.

And the change in the way students protest belies a sharp shift in generational attitudes and beliefs.

In 1969, the Vietnam War and a belief that they could change the world mobilized students to protest. Today, apathy, pre-professionalism, the lack of unifying cause and the University's willingness to negotiate have scaled down protests and chipped away at the legacy of activism left by the students of 1969, according to past and current students administrators.

Harvard's History of Protest

Few protests have caught the atten- tion of the campus and the national media asthe protests of 1969 did.

Following on the heels of the 1969demonstrations, students enlisted in two decades'worth of protests demanding the divestment ofUniversity holdings in colonized and apartheidcountries.

These protests began in 1972 when 34 studentsoccupied Massachusetts Hall to force theUniversity to divest from South Africa. The issueresurfaced again in 1978 when more than, 1,000students participated in rallies, marches andblockades of administrative buildings.

The rallies continued, but studentparticipation began began to drop drasticallyafter 1985 until the recent events in south Africarendered divestment an obsolete issue.

In March of last year, the Coalition forDiversity stitched together a patchwork ofminority groups, galvanizing the concerns andprotests power of nine campus organizations.

One of the largest alliances formed at theCollege, the coalition issued an ambitious list ofdemands, including increased minority facultyhiring, a minority resource center and "anofficial investigation into the role ofinstitutionalized racism."

Although the coalition had the potential forprotest rivaling those of 1969, the actualdemonstrations involved little more than a dozenpeople clothed in black handing out flyers.

The crusade for the coalition's demandscontinued this year with the protest of a JuniorParents' Weekend panel, but again, thedemonstration was relatively small.

Last year's selection of former Chair of theJoint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin L. Powell as the1993 Commencement speaker provoked outrage amonggays and liberals.

Three hundred students protested inTercentenary Theater, issuing demands thatincluded a call for the University to denounce theban on gays in the military "from the Commencementstage" recognition of domestic partnerships andthe creation of a gay studies program.