UO students and faculty members gather in the
EMU amphitheater for an anti-war rally.
While community activists remain rooted
in Eugene, students come and go. Even dur-
ing the height of the Vietnam War years,
when close to one-fourth of the UO student
body was involved in protest activities, the
activity levels of campus groups waxed and
waned. Student leaders rose, energized the
student body, and then left.
“A lot of students see themselves as
activists for about four years, or whatever
time they are students,” Howard says.
Other factors play a part in suppressing
student activism. For one, Howard says,
young people are discouraged by the enor-
mity of the social problems — such as
racism, two-party politics and globalized
corporate rule — that create war.
“Everything is so interconnected,” she
says. “You tug one end and you’re just
going to pull so many other strings. We
can’t push for one thing without the others
being attached.”
All of these hurdles leave Howard feeling
exhausted. “I hope to be hopeful, if that
makes any sense,” she says. “I don’t think
that it’s going to get better anytime soon, but
I have to imagine that things will improve in
some capacity. Otherwise there’s no reason
for me to be doing what I’m doing.”
U
O student Scott Gibbs, 23, is per-
sonally opposed to the Iraq War
but chooses not to act against it. He
feels that individual consumption choices —
what to buy, how to commute — are more
effective than organized movements in creat-
ing social change. “You can lose your own
values in the group mentality,” he says. “I
think it’s more of an individual struggle that
people need to take on.”
Gibbs acknowledges that he grew up with
more material comforts than his parents, and
that affluence might have affected his hands-off
approach to politics. “The Vietnam War
activists probably say that we’re a more spoiled
generation, and it’s easier for us to just sit back
and not take an active voice,” he says. “But then
again, I don’t know if that’s because we are
spoiled or maybe because it’s too hard to decide
what the right thing is anymore.”
For Gibbs, the Vietnam War protests were
less of an inspiration than a lesson in futility.
“I don’t know if the people protesting the
Vietnam War had that much of an influence,”
he says. “It’s easy to feel hopeless in the
world today, because what can a single per-
son do against so many other people? There’s
so much damage that’s been done. I’m not
really angry as much as I am confused and
questioning my own ability to fit into this
greater picture of ‘What can I do?’”
That’s an attitude that Malcolm is work-
ing to change. “How do you measure how
much worse it would have been without
protest?” she asks. “You can have a victory,
and the victory can turn very sour. But you
have to believe in your heart that it still mat-
ters. You have to believe that there’s some-
thing in the human spirit that cannot be negat-
ed by what happened next.”
R
egardless of their age or political
views, every source interviewed for
this story agreed on one thing: the
draft agitated the youth in the ’60s against the
Vietnam War, and a renewed draft today
would probably galvanize young people
against the Iraq War.
“I’ve basically spent my adult life oppos-
ing the draft and draft registration, but I have
to wonder, if there were an equitable draft, if
there wouldn’t be more opposition to the war
than we have now,” Malcolm says.
The draft is a powerful catalyst for activism
because it makes a distant war personal.
“People will be pretty comfortable with things
as they are until they see a direct connection
between the war and themselves,” Duff says.
“We’re very capable of being active and trying
to change the system, but it’s going to take per-
sonal involvement in the consequences of war
in the way that it did in the ’60s. We don’t live
in a bubble, and if we don’t act early, we’re
always going to be too late.”
Asked if he would be more active against
the war if there were a draft, Duff looks
sheepish. “I’m opposed to the war now, but I
would be more involved in the antiwar move-
ment” if there were a draft, he admits.
“Which is kind of sad.”
L
ocal activist Carol Van Houten, 67,
views today’s college students as
more conservative and career-orient-
ed than students in the ’60s. The result, she
says, is an aging activist population in sore
need of youth leadership. “We need young
people more committed to learning the skills
of organizing,” she says. “Us old farts need to
get out of the way and let younger people
take some roles, because we need that energy
and creativity. Otherwise we’re stuck with
the same-old same-old.”
Van Houten is sympathetic to the econom-
ic burdens that modern young people carry.
She says that today’s students are leaving col-
lege saddled with more debt, women are
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