Welcome, Huskies, to the University of Connecticut. You have arrived at UConn in a moment when it is increasingly tempting to believe that the world around us, and the policy that shapes it, is an extrapersonal affair. After all, as a college student, you are told to focus on your studies. How can you possibly find the time to keep up with the world? This year alone has already brought a slew of headlines: from foreign wars, to privacy debates and to November’s upcoming midterm elections. For many new college students, it’s easiest to believe these are problems for someone else to solve. Leave politics to the politicians and the righteous activism to the Greta Thunbergs and the Wawa Gatherus of the world. You, after all, are just a student. What can you do?
Yet despite your busy schedules, the world continues to go on all around you. Federal decisions about education funding have already impacted UConn, threatening the programs it is able to provide. Amid government pressure, support for low-income students has been slashed at universities nationwide, and student loan forgiveness continues to be cut back. On campus, debates over immigration continue, with many students concerned about UConn’s lack of a committed response to the potential for deportations to occur on campus.
The realities of such a politically charged atmosphere are not new to college students. Since the very beginning of our nation’s higher education system, students have been faced with injustice of varying scales. The first known case of student activism on an American campus was in 1766, when students at Harvard organized strikes in protest of poor food quality during the ‘Butter Rebellion.’ Ever since, college campuses have been at the forefront of change. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, students in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged as leaders in community organizing by looking beyond their campus to bring change nationwide. Speaking at the White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged the emerging importance of young people in the fight for change, stating it “was initiated, fed, and sustained by students.”
The same spirit of student advocacy has persisted since. Student strikes in the wake of the Kent State shooting helped bring the growing opposition to the Vietnam War into the national spotlight. After the Santa Barbara Oil Spill occurred off the coast of California, local college students rallied alongside their neighbors, helping to create some of our nation’s first organizations dedicated to environmental accountability.
These movements were formed because college students understood one thing: they were not merely spectators of global events, but active protagonists in a changing world. Students in the past have repeatedly demonstrated this spirit, and UConn Huskies have the same capacity today.
As college students, our education is not meant to be contained to the classroom. UConn teaches each of its students to be global citizens. The knowledge we receive in the lecture hall is one half of this. The second half of our education comes from the application of what we have learned to the real world. As the Class of 2030, you don’t need to agree on what this change should look like. A student advocating for abortion rights has the same right to push for change as one advocating for abortion restrictions. A student concerned about immigration has the same right to organize as one concerned about deportation policy. Recent on-campus campaigns have demonstrated this range of perspective — from Mutual Aid’s grassroots support network to UConnifer’s advocacy against a potentially environmentally damaging golf facility.
It is tempting to believe that, as a freshman, you will figure this all out later. While that may be the case, your actions already exist in the context of an ever-more divisive political climate. As a Husky, you do not have to be an activist. You must, however, remember that you have the right to be one. As the Class of 2030, you represent the future of not just our university, but our nation. With your diplomas, you will emerge into the world as talented, educated and politically consequential individuals. You represent an inheritance of responsibility: you are the future of our nation. It is this inheritance that grants you a right to participate in our nation’s civic processes — and the agency to shape them. Huskies, do not waste this opportunity. Don’t just ask how your freshman year will shape you. Ask how you will shape it.