The Meaning of "Student Movement"

Every time I Google our school newspaper without adding “Andrews University”, my search results include websites like “The student movement and the antiwar movement,” or “7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism,” and “Student Movements of the 1960s.” The top search result (Khan Academy) tells of a student movement that arose to “demand free speech on college campuses.” It started at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, when students involved in civil rights activism chafed at the university’s sudden attempt to prevent them from organizing politically on campus. As time progressed, student activism expanded to include the anti-war movement, and student groups began holding protests and demonstrations.

The role of news media in the antiwar movement increased both antiwar sentiment and hostility towards antiwar activists. Journalists had a large role in digging through the official version of the US war effort, and they started uncovering the truth of the conditions in Southeast Asia at the time.

Student movements serve to make change. They serve as a space for young people like you and me to raise our voices and make a difference in the world. From the Greensboro sit-ins in the 1960s, to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, to the Black Lives Matter protests that flooded the public in 2020, students have always played a large role in activism and social change.

But it’s sometimes easy to convince yourself that change isn’t really possible—that one person alone isn’t capable of making a very large impact. But the beauty of humanity is that we are not “one person alone.” We are billions of people on the planet who, in sharing ideas and stories, we are able to learn from each other, and decide for ourselves what we stand for. Together, we can fight for what we believe in, make a difference in the space we inhabit. We can even make change right here on our very campus through our thoughts, actions, and speech.

And this is the purpose of our newspaper. Its name connotes young people making change through their ideas and their writing. Just take a look at some of our articles this week: we see a proposition to change the way chapel credits work, a subject that has been continually discussed on the Andrews campus; we meet the president of the largest club at Andrews, as he helps bring Filipino culture and heritage to our diverse campus; and we see musicians inspiring others through the AU Symphony Orchestra. And this is just to name a few of the great articles we have this week.

The Student Movement is meant to be the voice of our campus’s young people. It is meant to spark discussions and push readers to engage critically with the current news. And I’m so glad we have a platform to do this, but we shouldn’t stop there. Written words can develop into thoughtful discussions, and thoughtful discussions can turn into actionable change. We are capable of changing the world around us. And to begin, all we must do is to lift our pens to write, and raise our voices to speak.