Empowering Students to Fight the Power: Student Engagement in Today's Social Movements

Introduction

College students today exist within a world that is experiencing a paradigm shift in the discourse related to our societal notions of privilege, race, marginality, and identity. Topics like Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Disability Theory rarely made their way outside of a classroom, let alone to the familial dinner table. While these students may not have been exposed to the academic realms of relating to these topics, their engagement with social justice discourse has taken seemingly lofty concepts and made them the focus of an entire generation's expectations of how they want and expect to see the world around them. It has changed how we view activism and the power of today's youth. To some it may seem like this shift in social justice discourse may have happened overnight. However, through a combination of external factors, the rhetorical landscape of identity discourse has slowly changed over time. By viewing these factors as a complex network of dominos one can begin to trace the multitude of ways today's college students are developing meaning and identity by exploring their change of positionality within an intersection of identity, environment, and historical context. These subtle shifts in identity development began within in-person discourse and texts and have changed over time thanks in part to the accessibility of social media in our lives.

There has been a long connection between college youth and social activism in America. Large societal movements like the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s, the Vietnam War in the 70s, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s have pushed young people to the streets in protest. While past movements continue to inform today's activism, social media continues to change how these movements are formed and enacted. Within activist communities, platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook have become the new “word of mouth.” Social media has changed the landscape of how “social” movements develop. Gone are the days of campus flyers, paper pamphlets, and critical conversation lectures. This modality change of activist education has pushed today's college students from strictly campus-based civic engagement and into the world around them. Instead of just hearing about movements from a friend or a group meeting, college students can join groups or pages and automatically connect to activist communities on a local, state, or national scale.

As we have found all too often in the world of higher education, we as professionals are trying to play catch up with the ever-changing landscape of student development. How do we uplift or encourage our students who actively participate in sit-ins, protests, rallies and recognize the mental and emotional strain that these events may cause? How do we as professionals engage in our self-reflection in these issues so that we are able to ensure fruitful conversations with students looking for guidance and support? As the world continues to become more unique, civic engagement questions will only become more and more critical.

This chapter will explore this change by using past moments' historical context and connecting them to current social movements. Student activism on college campuses has changed dramatically as our world has changed significantly. We will explore this change by examining multiple large-scale social movements that have made a lasting impact on today's trends. The text will center on race, disability rights, and LGBTQIA identities. It will center on supporting students through civic engagement as a means to build higher learning capacity. Overall, this chapter will provide the reader a holistic view of social movements that tell a larger story around civic engagement and affinity engagement through linking the past and present.

It is essential that this learning happens within a framework that gives readers tangible ways to change with their student leaders in the future. We will introduce Edwards' Model for Social Justice Ally Identity Development to guide learning and frame tangible steps that professionals use as they engage their learning. Alongside theoretical frameworks, allowing readers to take moments of pause and consider how this passage connects to their praxis is critical for implementation. Sections will include reflection questions that provoke thought and challenge readers to consider how these lessons can apply to them personally and their current work.