No time for apathy

Donald Collins explains why today's students are just too busy to protest

Given a looming war on Iraq, will students respond by igniting an anti-war movement like that mounted against the Vietnam War in the late Sixties? Probably not. Student activism in Britain, like young people's voting behaviour, has waned from generation to generation. To find a student campaigner today is rare. When the bombing began in Afghanistan, only 150 students from London's universities gathered to protest outside Westminster. In addition, 50 students from the University of Sheffield (student body: 20,000) protested.

Even voting figures at student elections are suffering, with many unions having to offer alcoholic inducements to voters; or, in the case of my students' association, lollipops. If the opponents of conflict with Iraq are looking for British students to create an anti-war movement, they are wasting their time. This apathy is largely the result of external pressures that are shaping the attitudes of today's students. Contrary to the stereotype, most students don't sit around all day drinking coffee, smoking spliffs, and putting the world to rights. The majority are working in part-time jobs. This, and all the travelling to and from work, takes up any spare time. Without the time to immerse themselves in current affairs, today's students are ignorant about the sorts of issues that got their predecessors hot under the collar. And they wouldn't have time to attend marches anyway.

Of course, there are still some privileged students who have time to get involved in extra-curricular activities. But there simply aren't enough student radicals out there to get any momentum going. Knowledge of current issues is also hindered by the tendency in sections of the media to reduce political dialogue to sound bites, and to provide scant analysis of the process of government. There are failures, too, to place international news in a historically significant context.

To compound matters, student politics is becoming a fragmented. Many student unions and associations are opting out of the National Union of Students, so that a national student body couldn't be easily mobilised into a collective force.

And with students now representing a much broader cross-section of society than in the Sixties, consensus – of any sort – is becoming increasingly unlikely.

education@independent.co.uk

The writer is a journalism student at Napier University, and the editor of the student newspaper 'Veritas'