Faith And Frustration: The Limits of Campus Protest In The US and Abroad
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(OPINION) Angry students threatening campus police. Students holding signs in the lobby of a classroom building. Which do you prefer? Which is the best?
Both happened on private university campuses — one at Columbia University in New York City and one at a faith-based university in Eastern Europe.
This year, Columbia University found students occupying a room in Butler Library, chanting slogans and chaining themselves to a fence to draw attention to Palestinian issues. Columbia students garnered headlines, but did the protest matter?
At one time, Columbia was known as an Anglican institution, but it has since positioned itself as a secular but prestigious Ivy league institution.
In Lithuania, another private university that continues to emphasize its faith identity tried a different approach. Drawing on the centuries of the Mennonite tradition of Anabaptist principles, LCC International University supports non-violence and sponsors a Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation.
Founded in 1991 to help students from former Soviet-bloc countries and elsewhere learn about freedom, LCC is the only faith-based university in Europe that uses a North American style of instruction for the liberal arts. The university is known for its emphasis on peaceful resolutions to thorny issues.
For some LCC students, this approach penetrated their recent protest — not over the war in Israel but the state of Lithuania for not renewing its accreditation of the communication department.
A routine self-study of a communication program in Lithuania led the Ministry of Education to not renew the Department of Contemporary Communication program at LCC International University in the city of Klaipeda this year. Lithuania has given the university until December to have students complete the major, leaving communication students blinking and questioning authority with a muted protest.
One professor offers comfort by telling them: “Jesus is the prince of peace.” Nonetheless, administrators, students and faculty did band together to combat the decision to no avail. No one called for broadcast journalists to intercede or donors to quit their support. The protest in the lobby of the administrative building was a symbolic gesture to highlight that the students were crestfallen, disillusioned with the nation that they hoped would spearhead their dreams of lucrative career.
One administrator noted that the ministry acknowledged that LCC tried to obtain an extension, but it failed.
“I think we will be moving on,” he explained.
Students from the old communication major are working furiously throughout this summer to finish for the fall 2025 semester, which includes defending original thesis research.
Earlier in the year, Lithuania’s ministry of education found the communication program lacking in professors with terminal degrees in communication and a general lack of research presentations and publications.
In early April, representatives of the Ministry of Education responded to a petition signed by nearly 70 students who reminded the ministry that over the years, more than 100 programs in Lithuania were allowed to “teach out” the major when accreditation was lost.
Now more than 20 juniors hope to graduate in December, perhaps sooner. They are busy working on their mandatory thesis.
The student protest is mild by U.S. standards where this year some students in the United States face deportation for their efforts. At LCC, students didn’t position themselves as victims demanding redress. They offered a mild protest reminiscent of Japanese transit workers who strike but continue to do their jobs only donning black arm bands.
At LCC, the men and women who protested stood in the lobby one day at the main classroom building, looking grim, and talking in hushed tones.
“As for the protest signs, everyone wrote their own,” said Xeniya Cherednik, a communication major from Kazakhstan and the incoming president of student government. “They were bright, honest and reflected the strong emotions of those involved,” she said.
Of the nearly 600 students at LCC, 25 percent are from Ukraine and others are from 60 countries including Lithuania. The protest didn’t concern the war in Ukraine.
As of today, the protest at LCC has made no difference. In New York and across the country, much of the same could be said.
In a 1965 address to the National Student Council, Hubert Humphrey, U.S. Senator and vice president, reminded student activists that, that protesting doesn’t guarantee policy change. For the most part, it doesn’t — particularly on a private university campus, whether in the U.S. or a North American-style campus in Europe.
Perhaps the greatest benefit is one identified by LCC communications major Vasyl Chovnitskyi of Ukraine: “The protests did not seem to make any difference, but it was definitely cool to see the unity of our students.”
Michael Ray Smith is scheduled to be the incoming chair of Global Business and Public Engagement at LCC International University, the major that will replace the outgoing communication program.