Edward “Ted” Melillo, Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies
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I vividly remember my first sit-in. The contagious energy of group solidarity, the echoes of call-and-response protest chants, and the mingled aromas of warm pizza and freshly photocopied flyers invigorated an otherwise cold, bureaucratic space.
In the fall of 1996, hundreds of college students, human rights activists, union members, and working-class women, men, and children occupied the rotunda of Pennsylvania’s capitol building in Harrisburg to protest the deep cuts to welfare and health care programs signed into law five months earlier by Governor Tom Ridge. At the time, Ridge was living in a 26,000-square-foot mansion, subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of $1 million per year. Although my fellow protestors and I did not achieve our primary objective of changing this debilitating legislation, we played a small part in reinvigorating a national conversation about issues of poverty and their relationship to an economic system riddled with inequalities. [1]
The Harrisburg sit-in was the first time I thought of myself as an activist. During my undergraduate years at Swarthmore College, participating in social and environmental justice movements led me to appreciate direct action as an embodiment of democracy with a lower-case “d.” Although elections are crucial features of an open society, by stepping outside of the ballot box to advance change through more persuasive means, we become the leaders we had previously only imagined voting for. [2]
It is tempting for new students to envision your undergraduate careers at Amherst as a series of inward-looking pursuits. Resume building, hedonism, and social networking can be valuable realms of experience. However, your four years at a prestigious institution occupied by lively minds and energetic bodies offer new and exciting possibilities for more broadly defining what “Lives of Consequence”—the much-touted slogan embedded in the Amherst College Mission Statement—might look like.[3]
From the vantage point of history, you will be in good company. For hundreds of years, movements for social and environmental justice have drawn upon the boundless energy, optimism, organizing power, and resourcefulness of college students. During the nineteenth century, young women and men on campuses played key roles in the successes of the antislavery, eight-hour workday, and women’s rights campaigns. Likewise, during the twentieth century, students at colleges and universities were the beating heart of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War Movements. The twenty-first century has already witnessed widespread and consequential anti-racist activism, campaigns to win justice for victims of sexual assault, and efforts to move beyond a fossil-fuel-based society. These struggles have animated millions of students across the United States and the world. It is stimulating to study such movements, but it is even more exhilarating to become part of them.[4]
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[1] For more, see: https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/philadelphians-campaign-against-welfare-cuts-united-states-1996-1997
[2] On the longstanding relationship between democracy and social movements, see: Michael Denning, “Neither Capitalist nor American: The Democracy as Social Movement,” in Culture in the Age of Three Worlds (New York: Verso, 2004), 209-226.
[3] The mission statement can be found at: https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/facts/mission
[4] For an introduction to eleven of the more recent social and environmental movements that began on campuses, see: https://www.freshu.io/taylor-lang/the-biggest-social-movements-led-by-college-students-in-history
Amherst Disorientation 