emilys

=Anti War Student by Emily S=

Generation Not-So-Silent By EMILY SMITH Published: 1968

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY — Unlike the previous “silent generation” and the generation of the 1950s, the youth of the 1960s are almost a new breed. Neither outspoken nor party-crazed, this generation is “doing their own thing”. They wear torn blue jeans, beards, headbands, love beads and peace signs. They don’t mind their own business or work well with Establishment and they upset government officials as well as their parents. The youth of the nation has become the voice of change—these are the antiwar students.

This movement based around universities has become a movement important not for its size but for its ideas pursued and expressed with multi-issue protests, community based action, and grass-roots reform. In the year of 1960, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was created by students at the University of Michigan: a student organization of the New Left that has become and continues to become a role model for many other political agendas, programs, and movements including the Civil Rights Movement.

The agendas and ideas of the anti-war students and SDS include an array of topics which are held to be pressing issues to the nation: mainly freedom and equality. Focusing on many issues, overlooking social accomplishments and criticizing its inadequacies is how this movement believes it should execute a complete change of society in order to get anything accomplished.

On the issue of the war, students stand strong against the war, its draft, and what the nation is becoming because of it. “Let the generals fight the war in Vietnam, not the president in the White House,” said a student at the University of Virginia. It is also believed that “civilians should exercise control over the military” and “the nation should never turn into a warfare state”. These are key beliefs of anti-war students in addition to the statement made by another UVA student; “I don’t want to get killed if I don’t have to be.”

Nixon said of students that “they’re the luckiest around”, but without the voice and the involvement of the youth the nation would never advance to its full potential. This university based movement has begun to strengthen democracy and should continue to strengthen it in the future with future generations.

Works Cited Archer, Jules. //The Incredible Sixties.// San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Goldfield, David. //The American Journey.// Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. “Homefront USA.” //Vietnam////: A Television History.// DVD. WGBH Educational Foundation, 2004. “Why Those Students are Protesting.” //TIME.// Time, Inc. 3 May 1968. 11 December 2007. <[|http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,841240,00.html>.]