Of Sophomores and Storm Troopers
After the April 8 total solar eclipse, a campus awakening met by violence and the University's desperate quest for identity and purpose in the digital age.
Teach your parents well
Their children's hell will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by…
— c.s.n.y.
Dear Friend and Reader:
MARS IS NOW IN ARIES, which has been the scene of so much drama the past few months. The total solar eclipse conjunct Chiron of April 8 (just over a month ago), and the recent Mercury retrograde in Aries have stirred and awakened the natives.
Mercury’s retrograde path has involved three conjunctions to Chiron, and three to Eris (the last one is coming up). This astrology burns hot with awakening, to the degree where one must act on it, or else pull back and go deeper into sleep.
The April 8 total solar eclipse conjunct self-actualizing hyper-aware Chiron, witnessed by millions, certainly seems to have shocked some people into their senses.
And now Mars has arrived and is about to trace all those steps. It will soon cross the North Node, the eclipse degree, and then Chiron, and then Eris — pushing the issues with greater focus. We are seeing a response in the outer world as the protests and mass arrests. Yet for any of this to really matter, it must be internalized. The lesson must go inward rather than just being acted outward.
Destabilization of Identity, Intellect and Culture
We live today with the disembodying, identity-dissolving force of digital conditions. Disorientation and the destabilization of identity, intellect and culture are the results. A lot of people are struggling and don’t know why. Every communication, thought, image, transaction and shred of memory is run through pixels, bits and bytes.
The culprit is not social media; it’s gigahertz-speed microprocessing, and zeroes and ones, coupled with light-speed communication. This is whacking everyone out-of-body (meaning out of their senses and their common sense) in a whole new way. The symptoms are confusion, chaos and a massive flake factor.
A great many people are acting like they are having a bad trip on LSD and need to be sedated; many do not know their peril. They think they’re fine and come off like idiots.
Yet at a certain point, when an environment is pushed to an extreme for long enough, it reverses itself. That may be part of what we are witnessing with these campus protests. The students are throwing their bodies into the machine. At minimum, we can acknowledge they know they have them; that disembodiment has a limit.
Violence as the Quest for Identity
Philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) explained many times how the quest for identity is often expressed violently, by people, institutions and countries. When we have the peaceful quest for identity and self-discovery, we know humanity is making progress (and there are a lot of options).
The aggressors are trying to figure out who they are. I’m not saying it’s the right way; I’m saying it’s their way.
Since the time of radio, people have lived in what McLuhan called the “global village,” which is fundamentally hostile. This is a kind of phantom place, populated by people who have been shocked out of body by light-speed communication. And struggling to find expression in physical form, they will tend to become aggressive, tapping into the abundant disembodied rage that abounds.
In our time — the digital age, or what I call full digital conditions — we are on this fantasy trip where we are living in a kind of hologram. It’s extremely difficult to discern what is real, and then one doubts oneself as being real.
In this digital/AI hallucination, the University itself is rendered meaningless and drifting without purpose.
In the digital age, where anything can be known, anywhere, and where a degree verges on worthless, the University is useless. A textbook can be conjured like lunch on the Enterprise. Excellent university level classes are available on nearly any subject, from linguistics to quantum physics to Chaucer, for ten bucks a month at Great Courses.
So the University is choosing to rediscover its purpose by attacking the very students who believe in it and use it for what it was intended: learning. As a place to express ideas. Therefore, in the digital age, the students are the teachers.
Ripping Apart a Peaceful Protest
Thursday overnight into Friday, I watched state troopers and the riot squad rip apart a protest that consisted largely of students sitting around a tree. This was at SUNY New Paltz, a peaceful upstate New York campus where I doubt there has been an arrest at a protest. (Unless you count eight students arrested the summer of 1989 for playing their boombox loudly in a cafeteria as a kind of protest.)
From 1968 through 1972, there was a president named John Neumaier, who encouraged protests, including building takeovers.
Despite four different police departments, drones, a helicopter, K9 units and a kind of SWAT team. But — something is missing from that list.
The news media is presenting these events, emerging through the United States, as campus riots. Well, that’s true enough — they look like it once the cops get there. In addition to bringing in armaments and raising the pressure, more students get involved, and community members come out to support them.
Wednesday, a source on the prosecution side of the case admitted privately, “He [Pres. Darrell Wheeler] set the thing on fire by requesting this kind of law enforcement response.” He agreed that the lawn protest would have fizzled had the police not been invited on campus.
Did Not Return Calls at Press Time
This week, I put out calls to many agencies, saying that Pacifica Radio wanted to talk to them (that is my affiliation — the first public radio network in the United States, founded by pacifists).
I continued with calls to the central administration of the 64-campus State University (known as SUNY Central). I asked for three callbacks: from the press secretary, from the vice chancellor for legal affairs (essentially, the general counsel) and the vice chancellor for student affairs.
Had any of them called, my question was going to be something like:
“On Thursday night, I watched a riot squad beat the snot out of a bunch of kids sitting around a tree. Would you mind explaining that to me, to them, and to their parents?”
I also called Juan Figueroa, the Ulster County Sheriff. Then I contacted the press officer in my region’s headquarters of the New York State Police (Troop F). I contacted the SUNY New Paltz administration for additional comments from Pres. Wheeler. I wrote to Jen Metzger, the Ulster County Executive. This is your basic journalistic process on a big story: call everyone who matters.
I got no return emails; my phones did not ring once.
In Wednesday’s Daily Freeman, Figueroa, the elected sheriff, pointed out that the invading army did not use pepper spray or Tasers while bringing the students into custody. I guess by riot police standards, they went easy.
But he had dispatched his Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team (SERT). Their usual job is putting down riots in the county’s three prisons, one of which is maximum security. The clue that they were not expecting to take casualties — that this was all a show — is that the police had no ambulances ready, in case one of them got hurt.
Another Day in the Life of Law Enforcement Officers
There is someone well-placed in law enforcement to whom I can put sincere questions, and I either get real answers, or nothing. I don’t always like what I hear, but his responses are always instructive. I never ask about anything classified; mostly I’m interested in pretty basic stuff and bits of history.
This person was high enough in tthe command structure to be watching events unfold on a closed-circuit TV feed provided by the New York State Police. He also had me describing the action to him by SMS. So he had the best of both worlds.
Friday morning after the fracas, I emailed him, wanting to get inside the mind on the law enforcement side of this. I asked:
“Can you point me to one solid reason I should be in support of what happened last night? You know how I think — tell me something I can relate to.” (This was my way of saying, “Maybe I’m wrong for being against this; if so, explain how.”)
Him: “In what regard?”
Me: “That the action taken got any useful, positive result.”
Him: “Are you referring to enforcement actions?”
Me: “Correct.”
Him: “Not much to say. College students (there were a few) do not get to choose which laws they will obey, even if they are protesting. College wanted them removed. They were directed to move and chose not to. That is a recipe for arrest and that is what occurred. No injuries; all violation charges except for several misdemeanor charges against non-students. Another day in the life of law enforcement officers.”
No Need for a Useful or Positive Result
I knew he didn’t like my question, but recognized it was an important one. His responses were delayed, sometimes by an hour. I could tell he was miffed, pretending to not know what I was asking him about. Basically, I was calling him out.
His answer made me angry. I do not support his point of view; though we are accustomed to not agreeing on issues like this. I still want to know what he thinks.
Setting aside three errors — there were injuries, of both students and police; nearly everyone in the protest was a SUNY New Paltz student, there were faculty members present, and some people from town came in support; and the students were not breaking any law — until the police arrived and ordered them to leave — despite those misconceptions, I learned quite a bit from his statement.
First, many administrators and also the police perceive campus movements as a kind of political invasion. That is how they justify their actions, and blame any ensuing mess on “outside agitators.” In the 1960s, this canard was about alleged “communists” on campus. Agitators exist in some places, but this was not one of them.
Second, it was another day in the life of law enforcement, and it’s important we see it that way. It is a troubling thought that there will be other ordinary days like it. The message is, anything that is peaceful or legal today could get a police raid tomorrow, if we don’t like what you’re saying. And that is not freedom.
Oh, one last. It would seem he is acknowledging that the goal of police intervention is not a “useful, positive result.” So therefore, logically, the end goal must be something else. Maybe Wheeler was playing a little joke, and will dismiss the charges tomorrow.
But if he does that, he will have a hard time saving face with all the agencies I listed above — the same ones that won’t call me back. Maybe that’s not possible. Currently, they all have him to blame. He may have to admit that this is the stupidest thing he’s ever done, and his only option is to resign.
This is All on Pres. Wheeler
I don’t blame the cops for this disaster. I despise that they are so militarized, and also maintain that to invite them onto the campus was about the most destructive and self-destructive thing Pres. Darrell Wheeler could have done for his college.
As one faculty member asked me Thursday, “How will the campus ever feel like a safe place again?”
Wheeler invited the K9s, the prison riot team, state troopers, the helicopter and the rest of it. It was all his call. It’s irrelevant whether the chancellor or governor told him to do it; under SUNY governance guidelines, he alone gets to act during a non-emergency. Thankfully nobody got killed; thanks to the police, there were a lot of guns on scene, which turn any conflict into an armed conflict, whether used or not.
Wheeler knew the student leaders and many protesters personally; nobody can seriously claim they were off-campus agitators. He knew the students he was dealing with were not violent and had no plans to take over a building, or break everything. Their tents were pitched on a dormitory quad, not an academic one.
They were being impeccable about this for tactical reasons, understanding the game. At no time did students want to be seen as an actual threat. They even took down their tents, lest he get the idea they might build a stage and hold a music festival.
The students’ main demands were for transparency around the college’s investments, and divestment from what society is starting to understand (thanks to these students) is an apartheid state. In a meeting with students and community members Wednesday, Wheeler admitted that what is happening in Gaza is indeed genocide.
Yet Wheeler followed what seems to be a playbook that many campuses are adopting: zero tolerance for dissent. Get rid of them fast. Send a message. And ultimately, that message is that this campus is not a place where you can think for yourself. It was Wheeler saying, “I’ll take care of that for you. I know better.”
There Are Other Options
But not all campuses are conducting themselves like this. SUNY Purchase, a nearby liberal arts college quite like SUNY New Paltz, is negotiating with its protesters. Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, gave into eight of 10 student demands, with no arrests. Nearby Vassar College, a private campus, has the right idea: chill out.
Its president, Elizabeth H. Bradley, offered a statement last week:
“Recent heartbreaking headlines from campuses across the country exemplify the tragic consequences when college campuses cease to have dialogue and fail to imagine creative ways forward. I, along with the senior leadership team, am committed to resolving these issues in ways that allow our relationships across the college community to endure and even flourish.
“I ask every student, faculty member, and employee to help us avoid the divisiveness that has beset many campuses. We have had too much tragedy already this year. Let us be creative and wise enough to bridge our differences.”
We could use more of this spirit — specifically, self-awareness.
With love,
Additional writing: Joseph Trusso. Additional research: Cindy Tice Ragusa
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The writer is the president of Columbia University.
<< … The wave of protests, encampments, and building takeovers has since spread across the US and around the world. Whatever one thinks of the response of university leaders — denouncing hurtful rhetoric, enforcing rules and discipline, and summoning police to restore order — these are actions, not solutions. All of us who believe in higher education must now engage in serious soul searching about why this is happening. Only then can universities recover and begin to realise their potential to heal and unify ... >>
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Student activism evokes sense of disorder that doomed Lyndon B Johnson
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<< … “That kind of disorder that was taking place in the streets — the violence between police and protesters — without that, Richard Nixon would have never won,” said Norman Siegel, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who recalled tuning into the chaotic 1968 Democratic national convention each night from Mississippi, where he was then serving as a young civil rights lawyer ... >>