Student Protests: A Twist?

Okay, budget cuts are pretty universal right now: from homes to governments, everybody's making sometimes-extreme cutbacks.  And the UK is no different than California in this.  I did, however, find some interesting differences in the protests from the cuts made in California last year than the protests that have begun over the last couple of days.

To be honest, in Cali, most students seemed cranky, but not extremely bothered by it.  Some people skipped classes to go to protests, a couple teachers cancelled class so that they (and any of their students) could go to a protest, but mostly, the school itself stayed out of it and most people, at least that I know of, did attend classes if they were held during a protest time.  Actually, I take that back; the school administrations did send out e-mails letting us know that protests were occurring; however, that was the extent of it.  They neither encouraged nor discouraged attendance, and did not cancel classes.  But back to the students.  At my school, a group of students took the "extreme" measure of storming and taking over the Humanities and Social Sciences building.  Of course, it only lasted about twenty minutes.  Once the police got there and asked them to leave, they did.  Without fuss.  That, for obvious reasons, did not make any news (how anticlimactic).  The only reason I even heard about it was because there was an editorial about it in the school paper on a day I happened to be stuck on campus for four hours and needed reading material, that read, essentially, "Come on guys.  If you're going to be militant like they were in the 60's, can't you at least follow through with it?" 

So my verdict of Californian students' reactions to university fee hikes?  Cranky, moderately annoyed, but not really bothered enough to do much about it.

The UK's new coalition government has been rolling out new cuts this year as well.  (Though don't ask me to explain the coalition government bit, I'm not sure I understand it that well myself.  Certainly not well enough to explain it).  And of course, universities are getting hit as well.  Organized protests have begun this week, and look what happened at one while I was in class: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11726822. (Yes I realize the irony of being in class at the time of the protests. I didn't actually realize there was one today).  According to the "breaking news" scroll across the top of the BBC News page, 32 people were arrested in relation to the violence. 

Okay, so let me lay out my thoughts here.  In America, a country founded upon violent protest of a government's actions, students just get mildly cranky about tuition hikes, but not much more than that.  In the UK, where they've never really had a violent revolution like the US or France has, students get so upset that they end up breaking into the Conservative Party's headquarters, in many cases even to their own surprise. 

How ironic.  The Americans, who protest just about everything, don't really bother much with university budget cuts.  The Brits, who have a few more laws about the legalities of protesting, are the ones who end up full on breaking into a government party's headquarters.

Oh, by the way, I should point out that I am in a suburb of London, not London itself, so am a minimum 20-minute train ride away from where the action was.  Just because I got a few concerned comments on Facebook, I thought I should include that fact.

In the meantime, I have a test in the morning, so have to finish up the last bit of studying and head to bed.  Goodnight, world.