Here's Why Students at Harvard and Princeton Are Protesting

The answer might surprise you.
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At the beginning of last week we covered the protests at Mizzou pretty heavily, and they ended with the ouster of the University of Missouri systems president, Tim Wolfe. The week before that, Yale was demonstrating against an insensitive email sent by a professor defending racially-tinged Halloween outfits. By the end of last week Ithaca College was calling for its president, Thomas Rochon, to resign. At Claremont McKenna, the students were protesting their dean of students, Mary Spellman, who besides just ignoring racial bias on the campus, sent a very insensitive email to a Latina student. In it, she said she would work very hard to help those "who don't fit the CMC mold." She ended up leaving the school too. In between those calls for change from students as specific schools, there was also a national event, called the #MillionStudentMarch, for anyone who was fed up with the sticker prices and huge student loan debts at universities. Here's what it all looked like:

Missouri

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They also inspired a lot of other students at other schools to come out in support of them...

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Yale

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Ithaca

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#MillionStudentMarch

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Claremont McKenna

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This week brought a whole new wave of wave of protests:

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Princeton

Members of this Ivy League's Black Justice League student organization want Woodrow Wilson's name scrubbed from all facilities and school programs. (The former U.S. president was a pretty big fan of segregation.)

To get their point across, they staged a 32-hour sit-in by Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber’s office. Obviously, he would like to keep his job because the school is now considering their demands...

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Harvard/Harvard Law

Then at Harvard, students walked out of their classes this Wednesday, and met up with the kids at neighboring Tufts, in order to show solidarity with other black students protesting around the country. The Harvard Crimson reports chants like “Black Lives Matter,” “This is what democracy looks like,” and “We have nothing to lose but our chains” were all heard. Members of the university's law school joined too. Among other things, some of the students at Harvard would like the school's famous red crest replaced as it belonged to the Ivy's slave-owning founder. The next day, however, someone put black tape over the faces of all the black Harvard Law professors.

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Amherst College students also picked a bone with their administration over racial inequality, and the kids at Occidental College in California want their president, Jonathan Veitch, out too for his manner — or lack thereof — in handling sexual assault and racist complaints.

Amherst College

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Occidental College

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What does all of this mean? Well, first, it shows that today's youth are more engaged than ever. If you look at most of the above embeds, you'll see a lot of #BlackLivesMatters signage. That's because the powerful movement has captivated much of the nation, as thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the killings of unarmed black people. This in turn has sparked a wave of student activism across the country. It's no coincidence that the largest factions are demanding more meaningful actions in regards to racial issues on campuses. Perhaps they're trying to preemptively create a more positive environment for themselves once they leave school. And that attitude has spread like a domino effect to other issues affecting student lives — it should be noted that when #MillionStudentMarch protested about student debt, they mentioned their support for Mizzou numerous times.

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There are some strong critics of all these student protestors and movements on campuses, but as mentioned above, it's mostly just a bunch of people who aren't going to take no for a answer, and won't stop until they see the world they want to live in.

Related: A Mizzou Freshman Shares What Life Has Been Like on Campus During the Student Protests

Check out Teen Vogue’s November issue cover star, Emma Roberts.