Sunday, May 2, 2010

Abstract and Bibliography

Abstract

Protest has been the tool of choice for the powerless for centuries. People have always disagreed with government type oppositions and through numbers, they are able to put up a fight. But what happens when the amount of people a demonstration has plays no factor on the outcome? What if the battle being fought cannot be won? A protest does not guarantee results and it is not definite that protesters will get what they are fighting for. This seems to be the case with the past and present protests on rising tuition costs. State Universities and State Governments are constantly shutting down students and making it more difficult for student protesters to achieve their goal of lower tuition costs. One can argue that this would discourage students from even trying to change the system, but students are still pushing forward.
Through this research, the present day protests on tuition rates as well as those of the past, are analyzed to see if there is anything obtained through protest. There is no certainty with respect to the outcome of a protest. Students are fighting for what they believe in, but that doesn't mean that they will get what they are asking for. Through the act of protest, students learn key characteristics that will be beneficial to them later on in life. These characteristics are awareness, leadership, determination and organization. These four attributes are all taken from participating in protest and it is there where students are learning to become well rounded individuals. The experience creates intellectuals out of ordinary college students and teaches them to look at issues through all angles. So, if students are ultimately unsuccessful in achieving their primary goal through protest (lower tuition rates), they are still the ones who come out on top. The skills that are obtained through their actions will be beneficial to them as they carry on with their lives. The experience itself causes the students to be the overall winners of the process known as protest.

Bibliography

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Friend, Tad. “Protest Studies.” The New Yorker (January 4, 2010) 22-28. Print.
Gilmore, Janet. "UC Berkeley Protests: Tuition Hikes." E-mail interview. 31 Mar. 2010. Print.

Hanley, Robert. "Rutgers Students' Sit-In Turns Mellow." The New York Times 11 May 1990.Print.

Kaplan, Howard B., and Xiaoru Liu. "Social Protest and Self-Enhancement: A Conditional Relationship." Sociological Forum 15.4 (2000): 595-616. Print.

Lipsky, Michael. "Protest as a Political Resource." The American Political Science Review62.4 (1968) 1144-58. Print.

McCormick, Richard L. "Athletics and Rutgers Stadium." Letter to Rutgers Community. 12 Dec. 2008. Web.

Schussman, Alan, and Sarah A Soule. "Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual Protest Participation." Social Forces. N.p.: University of North Carolina Press , 2005. 1083-1108. JSTOR. Web. 11 Apr. 2010. Print.

Statehouse Bureau Staff. "N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's Spending Cut Plan Key Points | - NJ.com." New Jersey Local News, Breaking News, Sports & Weather - NJ.com. 11 Feb. 2010. Web.

Rhoads, Robert A. "Student Protest and Multicultural Reform: Making Sense of Campus Unrest in the 1990s." The Journal of Higher Education 69.6 (1998): 621-46. Print.

Wollan, Malia. "Students Protest Tuition Increase." The New York Times 20 Nov. 2009. Print.