Campus protests are part of the reason colleges exist

Authorities have cleared out pro-Palestinian protest encampments at campuses around the country, including UNC Charlotte. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says the conflict is also about a college’s reasons for being.

It's graduation time, so here’s a final exam for you. It’s just one question.

What is college for?

It could be that you think the whole point of going to college is acquiring a piece of paper that gets you a better job than you’d be able to get without that piece of paper.

That’s not wrong, exactly. But to me, it misses the larger point. College is about figuring out who you are.

It’s that transition phase when you’re not a kid anymore, but not quite fully grown. You stumble around and try on philosophies like you try on sneakers. Graduates don’t leave college a finished product by any means. But if students do those college years right, maybe they leave having a better sense of themselves.

Students at UNC Charlotte, like students across the country, have set up encampments and held protests against Israel’s role in the war in Gaza. The conflict started — well, it started long before most of us were born, but the latest round of fighting started with Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel in October that killed about 1,200 people and left hundreds more hostages. Since then Israel has dominated the war. By most counts, something like 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and 1.9 million have had to leave their homes.

Every major player in this conflict has handled it poorly, including the United States. But regardless of which side you take, if you take a side, it is clear, in this latest fighting, which people have suffered the most.

That’s a legitimate reason for protest. And the whole point of a protest is to disrupt things, to call attention to a cause, to make people uncomfortable.

Here’s some history a little closer to home. In 1963, the North Carolina Legislature passed a law that became known as the Speaker Ban. It barred members of the Communist Party or advocates of overthrowing the Constitution from speaking at any UNC campus. Students protested, vigorously. It took five years and a lawsuit but eventually the Speaker Ban was overturned.

College students have often been ahead of their elders when it comes to issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, and divesting from South Africa under apartheid. It’s likely that some of those protesters, now middle-aged and older, might regret what they did. Others, I’m sure, are still proud. Their actions helped them — and the students around them — figure out where they stood.

A few of the campus protests have gone too far, with students vandalizing property or intimidating other students. And I sympathize with the administrators who want to restore order to their campuses, especially here at graduation time. At UNC Charlotte, the administration took down the encampment, let students march through campus, but suspended some students who participated. Police arrested one student twice.

Here, again, is the question: What is college for?

Is the college’s job to hand out those pieces of paper and send everyone home happy? Or is it to provide a place where students and faculty tackle the toughest questions, knowing that 19-year-olds will not always do it in the smartest and most mature way?

When the protesters turn violent, that’s different. But most of the violence I’ve seen at these campus protests across the country has happened when police are sent in to clear out the protesters.

There is room for grace on all sides here, and plenty of room to disagree with the protesters — not just the way they made their stand, but what they stood for.

But I can’t imagine that colleges really want to teach the lesson that if you speak too loud, and care too much, the people in charge will shut you down.