When student is an occupation

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:45:00 +0000

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq my senior year of high school, my friends and I briefly thought the outrage we shared with thousands of Americans would coalesce into something like “our Vietnam.” Instead, we marched in the streets once or twice and then went home to worry about college admissions. Far from signifying a position on the front lines of national upheaval, studenthood in the post-9/11 era meant crawling deeper into one’s individual cocoon of privilege. Or so we thought.

Eight years later, my friends and I, now college graduates possessed of varying amounts of despair and health insurance, are marching in the streets again, together with people of every age and educational background. But this time there is no getting around the fact that we have our own grievances to voice. With astonishing speed, the Occupy Wall Street movement has begun to catalyze a consciousness among students and college-educated youth that we are a class with a legitimate self-interest in agitating for change.

Salon.com > Marissa Brostoff

When student is an occupation