Paint-can drums thundered and homemade signs shuddered outside the Holyoke Center last Thursday as the Student Labor Action Movement protested the university’s staff layoffs. But the hordes of passersby—aloof to the anger—indicated that the “Man” needn’t quake in his boots: The picketers, like many campus activists, proved ineffective.

Why, then, do students continue to hit the pavement? Without a draft to oppose or a president to elect, students search for some purpose in their lives, and they usually find it in the latest fad, like unionizing hotel workers or divesting from Darfur. Because these issues hardly affect students, students hardly affect these issues’ outcomes. As a result, campus activists take solace in their intent instead of their impact. Unlike their apathetic friends, they at least cared enough to try.

Unfortunately, students’ antics deflect attention from their stated goals. Last week, SLAM interrupted University President Drew G. Faust’s lunch in Eliot dining hall to offer her a letter detailing their demands. And at FAS Dean Michael D. Smith’s town-hall meeting on the university’s budget, the group unfurled a banner that read, “Greed is the New Crimson.” Rather than encourage empathy for workers facing possible layoffs, these stunts drew criticism for their rudeness.

While students perform such political theater to gain an audience, their initiatives routinely flop. In 2007, SLAM held a hunger strike to promote higher wages for Harvard’s security guards. Consequently, campus debate shifted from whether the security guards deserved larger salaries to whether the strike was justified. After some strikers were hospitalized, the security guards asked SLAM to cease its protest.

On top of the song and dance, campus activists speak in hyperbole, further undermining their cause. While students think they’re reciting soliloquies, onlookers think they’re watching standup. In 2006, SLAM called for Harvard to sever ties with Coca-Cola because the company allegedly smothered Colombian workers’ attempts to unionize. Then-SLAM leader Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07 declared: “There’s literally blood on the hands of that corporation.” Perhaps some thug in Colombia was guilty, but Gould-Wartofsky went too far: Did any receptionist at corporate headquarters “literally” have blood on her hands?

The true blue-collars would argue that dog and pony shows build support for their objectives. But sometimes their rhetoric seems more concerned with showing their good intentions than with showing results. A recent SLAM e-mail rallied students to “Save Harvard Jobs” by playing on their consciences: “It’s time to show that our support goes beyond high-fives in the corridors or chats by the security desk.” Instead of convincing students that layoffs were bad policy, SLAM insinuated that, if students did not oppose job cuts, they were uncaring.

This latest campaign is part of a larger trend among campus activists: Since they can’t enact the change they desire, they might as well show that they are good, moral people. Many student activists are sincere in their efforts and accept that they’re promoting lost causes. But, besides being futile, this approach can harm the very causes that students support.

For instance, when members of the Westboro Baptist Church appeared in Cambridge last month, almost 400 protestors greeted them. The students who confronted the WBC had the best of intentions: They meant to show their opposition to a despicable group. Nevertheless, the WBC fed off the publicity like a cancer. It should have been ignored. But these students’ desire to show that they were better than these bigots proved too powerful to ignore.

Certainly, students are entitled to express their opinions on any issue. But activists assume a higher purpose: They hope not only to articulate, but also to enact their vision of the world. So, when students use the weapons of civil disobedience as everyday tools, they blunt their edge. People don’t stop to listen to the kid with the bullhorn because they see him all the time. If students focused their energies on campaigns that directly involved them, they might have greater effect.

Until then, campus activists will wage fruitless campaigns. They’ll pass out flyers and wear ribbons and march on the Yard, but to no avail. And they will likely ignore these words of caution, as they are convinced of the righteousness of their causes. Many protestors like to quote Frederick Douglass, who once said that those who want freedom without agitation “want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” But point out that these protests don’t make so much as a splash, and campus activists seem content in responding, “Well, at least I’m aware there’s an ocean.”


Brian J. Bolduc ’10, a Crimson editorial writer, is an economics concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.