Students arrive at Nottingham with pre-booked rooms, set reading lists, and organised club nights. Obsessed with drink, drugs and a 2.i, they are rendered an impotent force - about as political as a flock of sheep. Or are they?

Musab Younis meets some campus activists - with surprising results.

It may come as a surprise, witnessing the busloads of Nottingham freshers being nightly transported to pre-arranged club nights at pre-organised times, that students have often been viewed as serious threats to various establishments. Indeed, fear about radicalised students in 1930s America was so great, a right-wing movement began to force faculty members to take ‘loyalty oaths’ declaring their patriotism and commitment to ‘American’ ideals. (By the end of the thirties, twenty-one states had actually adopted such oaths.) Student strikes in Paris in 1968, originally about the issue of university funding and the closure of a campus, brought the country to a standstill and very nearly precipitated another French revolution. And during the American Civil Rights Movement, it was the explicitly Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which organised the Freedom Rides and Freedom Ballots and eventually, frustrated with slow progress and systematic oppression, raised the banner of ‘Black Power’ for the first time. They were headed by the movement’s founder, Stokley Carmichael, himself a student at Howard University. Students catalysed, assisted and were instrumental players in a number of revolutions, reforms and popular demonstrations worldwide during the twentieth century – in countries as diverse as China, South Africa and Iran. Fast-forward to present-day Nottingham, and you will often hear a different story: one of bored students who are disconnected from political issues and materially-minded. Sam Walton, three-year member of the ESJC, explains: “People are worried that I’m going to disrupt their apathy. Apathy isn’t even the right word to describe it any more – they’re actively not caring.” Peter Blair, President of the Politics Society, notes with surprise the number of students reading for Politics who “really do seem apathetic.” Young people “are meant to be the idealistic ones”, says Chloe Cheesman the SU’s Environment and Social Justice Officer, “but that seems to be less and less the case.”
And Nsikan Edung, the vocal campus activist who led the highly popular library card campaign last year (and recently became president of the SU) comments: “No one wants to rock the boat.” He observes a large number of students absent-mindedly waiting to “roll into their graduate jobs” but, perhaps surprisingly, dismisses the notion of ‘apathy’. “They’re just harder to mobilise,” he claims. “But it can be done.”

There are wider forces at work, and it would be unfair to single out students as being particularly apathetic. Bored of indistinguishable parties, skewed media coverage and a clear official disdain for their involvement (remember the last half-hearted general election?), the rest of the country has shown no more appetite for political participation than students. Many of those who were active during the so-called sixties heyday fiercely refute that apathy has set in: that’s just a myth, they say. Activist idol Noam Chomsky quickly dismisses it as “part of the propaganda that’s trying to get people back to passivity.” The argument that it is getting more difficult to act against an overwhelming feeling of helplessness in the atomised, disconnected West does hold some weight – at least in theory. Guy Debord, the visionary French theorist, described the modern Western world as a ‘spectacle’, where a constant stream of amusements alienate us from ourselves but “show us a world than can no longer be directly grasped”. All activity is simply channelled into the continuous construction of the spectacle. A lot of this strikes a chord with anyone who has witnessed the constant partying and detachment from reality at Nottingham. You don’t even have to think abstractly to imagine Debord’s all-encompassing spectacle of false reality - Ocean on a Friday night will suffice as an explanation. But as well as all this theory describes some sense of reality, it also reflects a kind of self-indulgent pessimism. You get a sense that nothing can possibly be done to change these social structures and cultural norms – and that’s a decidedly non-activist way of looking at things.

If we move past our initial despair at the lack of a widespread political culture, we will discover a plethora of vocal activist groups on campus. There are about two dozen political societies that could be termed ‘activist’ officially registered with the Students’ Union; each focussing on different things, each with specific concerns. Some, like the societies affiliated with mainstream political parties, want to represent widely-held views whilst avoiding unnecessary controversy. Others thrive on debate and mixtures of opinion as a forum for discussion. But the majority are concerned explicitly with the question of help: they are activist because they attempt to address the question ‘what can we do?’ The recipients of this help vary: they can be refugees, AIDS victims, children, developing countries or the environment. Finally, there are the ‘umbrella’ movements, which seek to incorporate these groups into a broader structure, such as the Student Environment and Ethics Committee (SEEN) and the Environment and Social Justice Committee (ESJC) – not officially ‘societies’, but SU bodies – and the Nottingham Student Peace Movement (NSPM).
The Politics Society is a good example of an society that challenges our notions about apolitical Nottingham. Its primary purposes are to encourage dialogue and education: incorporating social events, current affairs seminars and guest speakers. Peter Blair, who heads the society, is critical of the activist tendency to work in groups of similar-minded people: “we want to get people talking from all different points of view,” he says. “If you just talk to people who agree with you, you’re intellectually patting yourself on the back.” Holding a forum for conversation can be the first major step in countering political disinterest, especially as providing a space outside of the seminar room can remove some of the formality associated with political discussion. But does all this talking really achieve anything beyond intellectually patting other people on the back? “Yes,” Peter says, noting critically the “grand gestures” of more outspoken groups. “You have to be realistic about what you’re going to change.” Putting pressure on the university and the SU can often be far more productive and realistic than trying to directly change global or international institutions. But this can still have the global repercussions you desire – for example, forcing the university to adopt a fully fairtrade policy, or a real ethical investment programme.

Conformism and the SU

There is sometimes a tendency to dismiss working within existing structures as intrinsically conformist. The Student’s Union is a case in point – it is a democratic body representing all students – and from the outside, it looks like it could be a powerful vehicle for change. Some of those who have tried to work through the SU are less enthusiastic about its potential. Nsikan Edung, who led the highly successful library card campaign last year told me: “They’re more interested in talking and being friendly to the university than taking them on.” But then he became president. Clearly, we should avoid dismissing its potential altogether. Chloe Cheeseman, who is the SU’s Environment and Social Justice Officer, agrees that the union can be tentative: “There is a feeling that we don’t want to wreck our relationship with the university,” but points to Nsikan’s library card protest of proof that official policy can change as a result of outspoken protest. She acknowledges a split “between those who want to work through the bureaucratic structure of the SU and university, and those who are alienated by the system and don’t believe in it”, and proposes a two-pronged approach. Working both within and outside of the system can achieve the best results, although it does require hardliners on either side to soften their positions. “It’s sometimes hard to bring those two sections of the activist community together,” she says, “but the Starbucks campaign has proved that we can compromise between ourselves.”

Although the union can be an effective tool, parallel structures are also necessary. The Nottingham Student Peace Movement is an example of a group with broad aims which has achieved notable victories on campus: “We campaign on everything,” explains last year’s president, Sam Walton. “We see something, and we feel moved to act.” Groups like NSPM can be essential in countering apathy, or the appearance of it – they campaign effectively, on local and international issues, and often bring together a large number of people. “I think we can educate a lot of people,” says Sam. This education is not purely about contributing to knowledge students already have; it’s also about changing the way people see structures of learning, and teaching them to treat the mainstream more cynically. “There’s a real ‘deschooling’ aspect to it,” he adds, citing the misinformation propagated by a corporate-controlled media as something activists need to work to remedy. NSPM is an optimistic group, and Sam sees real potential for change, citing globally-thinking but locally-acting students who have successfully campaigned for recycling facilities on campus and persuaded the university to invest ‘semi-ethically’. “At the moment, this is our arena,” he points out. We can achieve global changes, but working through local means can often be the most effective and most rewarding method. Campaigning serves a dual purpose: you (hopefully) achieve your campaign goals, at least partly, and you enlighten people’s minds along the way. “Everything serves a purpose to educate people,” says Sam.

The veneer of nonchalance and detachment at university can be deceptive, but scratch the surface and you can be surprised at the passion and idealism you find. “We’ve achieved a big victory on recycling,” Sam says confidently; “I’d like to see us winning the battles on media and education.” The changes he wants are not just material, but psychological: “more people believing they can change things.” University is clearly an ideal arena in which to act – students are technically adults, but almost completely free from the real responsibilities of adult life which can make active participation so difficult for all but the most committed in the wider world. We have free time and little responsibility, but various structures open to us through which we can educate, engage in dialogue, and affect change. Although we may commit ourselves to one particular issue, it’s important to recognise the scope of active work that can be achieved: in the Student’s Union, in educative and debating societies, and in campaigning and volunteering groups, the avenues are open for exploration.

Graduation can be the end of all this work – like death, it barely crosses anybody’s mind, but it eventually happens to everyone. Whilst we may have diligently given up our spare time for good causes at university, a quick visit to one of the careers fairs offered at business-orientated Nottingham can be depressing to a young idealist. They are generally composed exclusively of large corporations promoting undeniably conservative roles in management, law and accountancy. “I’m not a big fan of the fact that Nottingham seems to marketed to the FTSE 100,” says Peter of the Politics Society. “There’s absolutely no NGO or media presence.” Will there ever be a chance for us to put this activist knowledge to the test, or are we merely living out brief, adolescent fantasies before relegating our goals of world peace to a partnership at Merryl Lynch? Is graduation the death of the activist? Sam disagrees: “It’s incredibly easy to find a job that’s good for the world and is socially conscious. You just have to have one thing – imagination.” Corporate roles offer no real challenges, he asserts, and there is a variety of work available that will pay the bills and make a difference, providing you’re willing to think outside the socially-constructed box. An ethical careers fayre, planned for early next year, could be an important step in the right direction.

You get a sense that activism is not merely goal-centred; it does not simply focus on minor issues of political management that it dislikes and seek to change them. Instead, it seems to represent a fundamental unwillingness in its participants to compromise with and buy into the corporate consensus that appears to be pervasive at the university. Even in the face of slow progress and widespread disinterest, activists take satisfaction from the conceptual construction of alternatives. It is the process of thinking idealistically that those working for change gain a sense of achievement. To go back to Debord’s pessimistic image of the spectacle: it is something that “falsifies reality” but “is nevertheless a real product of that reality.” It is indeed impossible to deny the existence of a materialistic and market-orientated culture at the university. We cannot allow projected idealism to obscure our perceptions. But discussing the nature of this all-encompassing false reality, which represents “the dominant model of life”, Debord observed that “the spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned.”

Perhaps it is the very act of questioning that is the most ‘active’ of all.