The Times They Are Achangin'

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Some faculty members think that the burgeoning student movement is due to prosperity, not politics. One reason protests have revived, suggests Stanford Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, is because the economy is healthy. Agrees Berkeley Sociologist Neil J. Smelser: "Students are willing to get into a bit of trouble now because they are confident and don't feel the risk they did two or three years ago."

Today's protesters take a stance on the Establishment that is not so much anti as accommodating. At the University of Colorado, students consulted with school officials and campus police before demonstrating against the CIA. Notes Jill Hanauer, Colorado's student body president: "Unlike in the '60s, students today are more concerned about their futures. There is more willingness to work within the system."

These new pragmatic idealists approach political protest with the same methodical preparation they might give to a job interview. At the University of Wisconsin, students have organized petitions and face-to-face negotiations with the administration. Says John Schenian, president of the Wisconsin Student Association: "If demonstrations are your only tactic, then you're not going to be very successful. You just don't appear to be very rational."

As much as today's students are demonstrating against social injustice, they may also be protesting the fact that they are so often labeled credential-craving moneygrubbers. Yale Protest Organizer Tom Keenan, for one, argues that student idealism has not gone the way of the slide rule. Says he: "A sizable population of students is extremely discontented with the yuppie future and will take time in college to change things. These protests go some distance in disproving the idea that we're one homogeneous student body heading for business suits ." --By Richard Stengel. Reported by Cathy Booth/New York and Douglas Brew/Berkeley, with other bureaus