The entire student body united in Thompson Hall Friday night to protest the proposed tuition and fees increase. But you weren’t there, were you? 

Of course you weren’t. That protest occurred 73 years ago when all 2,000 students enrolled at the University put their weekend plans on hold to fight the recommended 47 percent increase in tuition — from $85 to $125. 

There is no way that N.C. State’s current student body could fit in Thompson Hall, but surely that can’t explain the lack of student protest against the $290 tuition increase recently approved by the Board of Trustees.

Since the board approved the tuition hike Nov. 16, there have been no organized student demonstrations to protest the 5.1 percent increase. 

The absence of student demonstrations at N.C. State reflects a growing trend among students in the United States, according to Dick Reavis, an associate professor of English.  

“Students today are afraid that protesting will hurt their chances of getting a career, and I don’t blame them for thinking that,” Reavis said. 

As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, Reavis was involved in the Civil Rights movement and the movement to end the Vietnam War. He participated in several anti-war demonstrations with Students for a Democratic Society including organized marches, which are all but extinct on American college campuses today.

“The big change has been cultural or atmospheric,” Reavis said. “The old sense of confrontation is gone and so is the whole attitude of ‘my opinion matters, and I’m going to make a stand.’”

Though student activism may have fallen out of popularity on campus, some students would like to see a return to the attitude Reavis said has disappeared.  

“Students need to step up and stand for what they believe in,” said Bryan Perlmutter, a senior in marketing and a member of the student advocacy group N.C. Student Power Union.

Perlmutter said the tuition increase should serve as a wake up call to students. 

“Times are different, and the political climate is different, but the need for student activism is still the same,” Perlmutter said.

NCSPU has chapters in various universities within the UNC System including N.C. State, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Asheville and UNC-Charlotte, according to Zaina Alsous, a senior at UNC-CH and member of NCSPU.

“N.C. Student Power Union is still forging a state-wide network,” Alsous said. “Students need this network to hold university leaders accountable to our values.”

Alsous said members of NCSPU meet weekly and hold conference calls so that all chapters are able to discuss how they plan to improve North Carolina’s higher education system. 

Members of the group often turn to student movements of a similar nature going on in other countries for inspiration, Alsous said. One such movement NCSPU has been watching closely is the Quebec student strike, a movement led by student unions to prevent a proposed tuition increase that will raise tuition by more than 80 percent during the next five years. 

“In Quebec, students were in the streets by the hundreds of thousands, and it’s only a matter of time before we see protests like that here,” Alsous said.

The members of NCSPU have also been following the Chilean student protests, Alsous said. 

Professor of Latin American literature and culture Greg Dawes has also been paying attention to the protests in Chile. 

Dawes is no stranger to Latin America or student activism. He grew up in Argentina where his father was involved with student unions. Dawes also spent time in Nicaragua during a revolution.

Dawes said the current movement in Chile began small, but it became quickly tied to larger issues.

“The movement started simply as a high school student strike, which spread to universities and then to other aspects of society,” Dawes said.

The same connections that helped the Chilean student movement to flourish are hindering American student organization, according to Reavis.

“People today don’t see a system, they only see isolated issues,” Reavis said. “There are a million issues out there, but nobody sees them as interconnected.”

The N.C. State student body of 1939 saw the connections between the cost of education and the economy and used them to make its case for lower tuition to the Budget Committee.

Frank P. Graham, the president of the Greater University of North Carolina, went before the Budget Committee in a hearing in 1939 and warned the committee that raising tuition would result in “social, economic and intellectual waste.”

The efforts of the student body paid off, and the tuition increase did not pass.

Dawes said he has hope for student activism in the United States, “but if there is no movement that will act as a vanguard, a movement that will spearhead the change and unify the masses, then things will only get worse for students.”

N.C. State’s chapter of NCSPU has not done anything about the tuition increase yet, but Perlmutter said the members of the organization are working to put something together.