Youstina Aziz, Contributing Writer
If you walk past Cabell Library on an ordinary school day, you will see students rushing to class, studying for exams, grabbing coffee and worrying about deadlines. College life moves quickly. There is always another assignment, test or obligation demanding our attention.
In the middle of the hustle, it is easy to forget that a university is not just a place that you attend before joining the workforce. It is also a place to discover your power to challenge the present.
Student activism is not some distant tradition that belongs to a faraway generation. It is part of the history and culture that shaped universities into what they are today. At VCU, student activism led to the creation of African American studies, the recognition of LGBTQ+ student organizations and the challenging of perceived injustice in university decisions.
These events did not happen because administrators suddenly decided to do the right thing: they happened because students went out and demanded change. They organized, challenged authority and refused to accept the idea that an institution’s decisions are above reproach.
If student demonstrations are so integral to a university’s history and culture, why does it sometimes feel as though students demanding change are a problem to be managed rather than voices to hear? What does it mean when a university celebrates the legacy of student activism while its current students navigate restrictions and consequences associated with using their own voices?
Perhaps the problem is not that students have stopped caring, but that we have become more comfortable celebrating activism as history than accepting it as a responsibility of the present.
Historically, universities were not created as the inclusive institutions we recognize today. Many were established to serve religious, political and economic elites with access restricted by race, gender and class. Higher education has a long history of exclusion, and Black students in particular have had to fight for access, recognition and representation. This struggle continues today.
However, universities were also the places where those very systems were challenged. During the Civil Rights Movement, Black college students organized sit-ins, challenged segregation and helped build movements that transformed American society, according to the National Archives. They did not wait until they graduated, had prestigious careers or someone permitted them to matter. They acted because the world around them demanded it.
This is evident throughout VCU’s own history. In 1967, students organized in front of Shaffer Court Dining Center to protest the mishandling of African American issues, which eventually helped establish courses that became part of the university’s African American Studies program, according to the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.
In 1974, VCU denied official recognition for the Gay Alliance of Students, according to a previous report by the CT. The students fought back in court, and in 1976, a federal appeals court ruled that VCU’s refusal violated their First and 14th Amendment rights.
This contradiction is not just historical. In 2025, VCU withheld the degree of Sereen Haddad, a Palestinian student who participated in a pro-Palestinian campus gathering, according to the CT. Although she appealed and won, her degree was delayed for more than two months. What does it say about an institution when a student does everything to earn their degree, but still has it withheld over participating in a demonstration?
When other students see this, they start to question whether using their own voices is worth the risk, especially for minority students. For many of them, a degree represents more than years of studying. It carries the sacrifices of their parents, the struggles of generations before them and the financial and personal costs for an opportunity that was never guaranteed.
Imagine all of that being put on the line, only for the institution you worked hard to attend to turn around and jeopardize your future because you stood up for something you believed was right. Is that truly the message VCU wants to send to the students who are watching?
Some of the opportunities and resources that students have today exist because earlier students refused to accept the way things were. Their activism was not convenient or comfortable, nor welcomed by people in charge. If these students had decided that challenging the university was too difficult, too risky or someone else’s responsibility, what would have changed?
Nothing.
We celebrate past movements once their victories have become part of the institution’s identity. We put up historical markers, commemorate important figures and teach students about the bravery of people who once changed the world.
Yet, do we teach students to recognize that they are capable of doing the same, or do we present activism as something extraordinary — something reserved for a handful of legendary figures rather than something ordinary people can accomplish together?
History becomes a story about a single hero who saved the day or a single villain who ruined everything. We learn names, memorize dates and move on. We remember who stood at the front of a movement, but forget the people who organized meetings, distributed information, challenged institutions and sustained the work when it became exhausting. We learn about the person who held power, but pay less attention to the institutions and individuals who helped that person obtain, maintain and exercise it.
This teaches us to wait for someone to save us, or to believe that injustice only happens because of one bad person rather than the many people and institutions that uphold it. This is a dangerous precedent for universities to set.
A university should be more than a place where students learn how society works. It should be a place where they learn to question who benefits from the way society works, who gets left behind and what they can do about it. If students leave college believing their only responsibility was to earn a degree and secure a career, then something important has been lost — critical thinking and independence.
We do not need to wait for permission to care about the world around us. We need to recognize that our voices already have value, that collective action can challenge even deeply established institutions and that democracy depends on people who refuse to surrender their responsibility to someone else.
If we are so proud of the people who changed history, why are we so reluctant to become the people who change it next?