On Thursday, January 27, about 85 student activists representing all five colleges and the Claremont Graduate University packed into a room at Pitzer College’s Gold Center for an organizational meeting. Over the course of the roughly two-hour session, representatives from the 25 organizations present gave short speeches on their issues and goals for the semester.

The groups represented included both established, well-known groups, such as the Irvin Landrum Jr. Justice Organizing Committee, Amnesty International, and the Worker Support Committee (WSC), and newer ones, such as the Dance Collective, the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations, and the Organization for Drug Awareness and Discussion. The groups were also diverse in terms of both their political orientation, with both the Libertarians and the Democratic Socialists in attendance. Two of groups present, ACT! (a five-college activist group) and Coalition of Associated Student Activists (CASA), have no specific cause with which they associate themselves, but rather exist solely to further cooperation between other organizations.

The mood at the meeting was one of extreme optimism. Students spoke passionately about the causes of their organization, and the idea that non-violent student action could make a difference was a universal theme. "I feel this is the beginning of a new era in campus activism. The spirit of the WTO [World Trade Organization protests] has inspired the diffuse voices out there to merge together," proclaimed ACT! head Andrew Cvitanovich ’02.

"We students have always been the moral conscience of society," WSC head Michael Flynn ’02 told students at a previous rally, referencing student movements of the 1960s. The sense of connection with the student activists of another era was also quite strong at this meeting.

This movement, however, is different from those from which it traces its roots. "As an organizer who started and continues to organize in the electronic age, I can’t imagine how information was exchanged before e-mail existed," Flynn said. One CGU student went so far as to say that her organization, lacking an actual office, "lived by e-mail." The immediacy of electronic communication was seen as a great asset by many of the participants. As a result of the meeting, an activist mailing list (a centrally-managed database of e-mail addresses) has been created by ACT! so that activists at all of the colleges can coordinate with each other.

While several speakers called upon the audience to consider the tactics of civil disobedience that had characterized the civil rights and anti-war movements four decades ago, others, such College Democrats, urged that activists focus on reform from within the system.

Despite this tension, almost all of the two dozen plus groups and causes represented at the meeting shared two goals. First, all of the groups expressed either plans or support for voter registration drives. Voter registration forms were distributed to those students present who were not registered to vote in the City of Claremont. Second, there was a general concern about how the colleges are investing students’ money. One of the groups, the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations, has made this its mission, demanding that the colleges invest their money in a socially responsible manner.

Moreover, there was a strong desire to form an activist coalition. Autumn Beard PI ‘O2 perhaps expressed it best when she said, "The only way that real change can be created is by collective pressure on the powers that be."

The student activists of the Claremont Colleges thus begin the semester with a new sense of optimism and cooperation. In the words of Flynn, "I’m excited about the prospects of how this and subsequent semesters are going to go. I think we’ve done the task of upgrading from a bunch of isolated causes to a coherent student movement."