Editorial: Activists: Put one foot in front of the other

It is incredibly heartening to see so many college students so passionate about so many worthy causes.

Of course, it is equally disheartening to see the campaigns for those causes become overwhelmed by inertia and stutter, becoming vocal but motionless machines.

It is our opinion that while student activism is alive and well in the 21st century, it is far too unfocused to be effective. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut: UConn students are trying to open a window and make love to the world; and they've gotten pneumonia because of it.

The massive, universal protests of the Vietnam war have not disappeared; they've just divided into causes far too numerous and at odds to create the necessary union to solve a single one of them.

Take ConnPIRG for example. According to their Web site, the group is dedicated to toxic-free communities, health care, voting rights and Internet freedoms to name a few. No matter where you stand on the above issues, it's hard to argue that they aren't problems that deserve solutions, but how much pressure can you keep on one issue without disregarding the others? The only possible outcome is not success, but a thinly spread base that is easy to ignore by those who oppose you.

To this end, The Daily Campus would like to propose something a bit radical. Why not get all the student groups together in some sort of protestor super-group - a UConn Activist Travelling Wilburys, so to speak - and pick one thing for the entire body to crush. Or at least half of the body. The goal should be to get a much bigger consensus on something than any organization has right now.

It doesn't have to be the most important issue facing the world. It could just be something that would be easy to accomplish - something to get a win under your belt and establish yourself as a viable power. But then you could move onto the next thing and the next thing, and eventually, actually get somewhere.

Admittedly, there are a lot of flaws in this idea. Getting the amount of people required for an undertaking that would end in an organized and agreed-on result might be difficult. They might not agree on the cause and the situation could very easily devolve into pandemonium. But considering the conceivable power if such a group could be activated, it is worth a try because, with our current system, we're not getting anywhere.

It's fun to get your friends together and yell at passers-by for awhile. But it's also self-indulgent and pointless. Let's close the window, stop struggling against each other, make some compromises. If everyone takes this slowly, carefully, one issue at a time and - most importantly - strategically, maybe you can get the kind of grassroots campaign together that your ancestors dreamed about.