Occupy Aristotle

Occupy Harvard set up camp in the Yard (with tents that "look like they belong to the 1 percent," as one of my students observed) earlier this month, provoking the Administration to lock all but four of the gates into the university's main quad, which is now only open to Harvard ID holders. Miss Self-Important has mixed feelings about this. Every morning, she must decide between getting coffee or getting to Latin on time b/c the walk to class has been extended by half a mile (Latin timeliness has suffered dramatically). In the initial confusion of the occupation, there was only one tiny gate open for both entrance and exit, and it would take 20 minutes of standing in line to be permitted to leave, making me and my students all late for my discussion section on causes of revolution in Aristotle's Politics. Eventually though, we were able to occupy the classroom in order to occupy Aristotle. On the other hand, the patent absurdity of the "occupation" by approximately seven people (at least judging by the repetition of the names quoted in the articles) has provided a steady stream of entertainment from the Crimson.
In response to complaints from the freshmen living in the Yard whose mobility is hampered by the protest, we learn that

“Student inconvenience is not on the level of global oppression,” said Sandra Y. L. Korn ’14, who is also a Crimson editorial editor. “I have little concern for students who have to walk 30 seconds more to get to CVS.”

So local oppression is ok as long as it's in the name of fighting global oppression. When inclement weather broke the iron wills of some protesters, the movementarians responded

that the Occupy Harvard movement does not require a large number of people for the tent city in the Yard to remain active. “We don’t need all of our tents to be 100 percent full all the time,” Whitham said. “We just need to make sure there are enough people to hold down the fort in the encampment, and I think we’ll be ok.”

Or maybe they don't even need to be 1 percent full 99 percent of the time? Why not just pitch 'em and leave? The university will treat a cluster of empty tempts just as diplomatically as it's treating a cluster of half-empty tents, and Drew Faust will issue press releases extolling free speech for tents if she has to. Harvard is very protest-savvy. This is no small issue--if you've ever done any college "activism," the scripts for this event will sound familiar to you.

College politics of the activisty, national headlining kind (as distinct from student government elections and all that small potatoes actual college politics) is an elaborate repeat performance of the mid-60s that has grown out of the synergy of kids' cultivated interest in "changing things"--whatever things happen to be at hand--and adults' interests in finding emotionally compelling stages on which to act out their own political agendas (children are very emotionally compelling, in case you've been living under a rock and haven't noticed). The kind of kids who want to' be political' and 'express their ideals' and all such things for which they've been lovingly patted on the head by adults show up to college (literally just show up, if you take the preponderance of freshmen in this to mean anything) and look around for some way to assert themselves against the gentle inertia of large but highly accommodating institutions--"the system."

It's a sign of how little youth culture has really moved from its creation (by, ahem, adults) in the mid-60s that the model for this kind of activity continues to be Berkeley and Kent State. Only now, alumni of the originals are standing by with professional public relations and media training (no worries, it gets more niche than this, and the Right has its avenues for it too--bipartisan gimmickry) for would-be activists who want only controlled bursts of police hostility and camera-ready shows of force that will stoke public anger without permitting the show to spiral out of control. No National Guard troops, plz. Everyone is instructed to stay professional, emphasize your openness to hearing "the other side," never let your anger or indignation show, stick to the script. The idea is to provoke the other side into letting their guard down and, say, pepper-spraying a bunch of immobile students. When that fails, you're instead stuck hosting a lot of windbaggy "forums" in which such empty platitudes are exchanged: “One of the great virtues of the campaign is that it scandalized the campus,” Novendstern said. “If anything, that was the resounding success of the movement.” Whoever drops the PR-talk and evinces emotion first loses. (Perhaps you wonder what the fight is over at this point. Perhaps the answer is nothing but a contest of wills and a bid for popular attention.)

The slickness of these things ("Visit our website for more information!" says Occupy Harvard) is met with the equal slickness of Harvard's response--we love free speech and our students, and only want to ensure their safety to sleep in tents in the Yard as long as they'd like, so we're going to lock the gates, pay the security guards OT, and wait it out. Sometimes, Drew Faust goes and visits with the camping kids, and I can only imagine that they pleasant nice small talk over hot chocolate with marshmallows. And why not? In the end, they both love Harvard for the same reason. It is a soft, accommodating conduit for their ambitions. Everything they do receives positive press coverage--the noble protesters (occasionally) sleeping in the yard and the humane university administration that defends their free speech rights--and their "experience" either coordinating or responding to this spectacle is something to highlight in future iterations of their resumes under leadership skills and teamwork. Organizing activisty campus performances is a nice if not requisite resume notch for future political jobs. (And don't I know it? Ah, college days.) It's such a tired, hollow show by now that there can't even be much indignation about it left to restrain.

So let's note the nice things--the clearing out of the tourist masses has permitted those who can get through the checkpoints the rare opportunity to enjoy the Yard's slide into autumn in peace and calm. One afternoon, a strong wind blew and I was the only person around to watch the rain of leaves--a nice moment. I am also no longer an inadvertent intruder in the photos of 14 Japanese tourists at a time when I walk up the steps of Widener (waiting until everyone is done photographing to make your entrance will take longer than renewing a driver's license at the DMV). In the spirit of this movement's aimless banality, I have now replaced almost all verbs of activity with the verb "occupy" in my speech and thought, so that I abandon the occupation of my bed in the mornings in order to occupy my bathroom, then the streets of Cambridge, then my Latin textbook, then my Latin class, and so on. I call sitting in my office "occupy cube!" and eating lunch "occupy sandwich!" (although it would perhaps be more semantically accurate for the sandwich to shout, "Occupy Miss Self-Important!" but perhaps it hasn't caught the spirit of the season yet).