"Is Student Activism Dead?"

TBC's editors have been pleased this summer to be working with our new editorial intern, Alexia Robinson. A promising young journalist with a degree from Florida A&M University, Alexia was selected to serve as our first intern through our new special arrangement with Black College Wire.

Alexia has been helping us with a host of tasks related to our comprehensive summer site redesign project, but we're also excited about a planned series of articles she will launch next month examining the state of activism among African American college students.

The series homepage will be here, at Series: Activism and Today's Black Collegians, and will explore the question: "Are today’s students less committed to important social, political and world concerns than were past generations?"

The idea for the series came about in reaction to specific campus demonstrations Alexia observed while a student at FAMU, as well as discussions with her peers about different types and levels of political commitment shown by different generations of Black students. Specifically, her studies of African American history and recent anniversaries of a number of civil rights landmark events left her wondering if some of the older folks who criticize her generation were right. Are today's students too materialistic and media- and gadget-obsessed to be concerned about politics and social justice? Or, is it just that today's students have eschewed sit-ins and rallies for more subtle methods; do they just express their concerns and passions in a different way?

In any case, we're looking forward to the series, and invite interested visitors to stop by and tell us what you think on this issue.