German foreign minister Joscka Fischer, icon of the peaceful 1970s student protests, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, MEP for the French Greens, are caught up in controversy about the "wild days" of student action.
Students today either have not heard about these mass protests or have long forgotten them. What is there for us to fight for now? There seems to be no reason to get active. Take tuition fees. There are voices against, but no real uproar.
Students no longer see themselves as a single body. They are law students, conservative students, rich students, poor students, but not members of the general student body. They are not committed to the student movement, but to their smaller societies.
Furthermore, pressures on them have forced most to be ever more focused on the results of their studies. Some because they need to get them over and done with quickly for financial reasons. Others because they are worried about the jobs market, with firms telling them that ideally graduates should be 22 or younger, have a couple of degrees and practical experience, speak four languages and be highly motivated. If one wants to fulfil those criteria, there is little time to be active in student protests.
The times when young people set out to study for their beliefs, their ideologies, their truths are over. Today most people strive for a good degree with which they can earn the most money. They step right into that greed trap, into the material world, getting engulfed, without ever dreaming. Where are the non-conformists, the hippies, the different-thinkers?
When students do want to change something, they simply become part of the system they want to change, taking positions in parties, collaborating with the universities, being appeased and having hardly any influence. Constructive change?
When we become part of the system, we can change things, but we cannot always keep our true beliefs and inner convictions. If it works, great. If not, we have to be one group, a single group of students standing up for our rights. Yet, unless there is something to bind us together, a real big issue concerning us all, there will be no single student body.
Gerhard Hoffstaedter
Canterbury, Kent