How can college students afford to do full time camp out style protesting? Don’t they have school work to do? Won’t professors just fail them for not going to class/doing the work (assuming they aren’t).
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this time of the semester is usually final exams week for many colleges, so routine lectures have already finished from the semester.
many participants in there protests may not be affiliated with the college.
People who are camping out to protest may go in and out of the camp to attend to their other needs. When I was in college a large number of students occupied the state capitol building as part of a protest in a manner similar to the current wave of protests. The media reaction may make it seem like these protests are extreme or out of the ordinary when in reality they are quite peaceful and even a routine part of the college experience.
It is very much the norm for protestors (be they college students or full-time employed adults) to forgo their goals and benefits in their personal life in order to protest, whether that means studying and getting the grade you had hoped for, or using your vacation time now instead of for a beach trip later.
Part of the point is demonstrating that your commitment to the issue you are demonstrating about is as (or more) important to you as your personal life goals and desires.
Classes typically run 3-4 hours per day. There is plenty of time left over for protesting or drinking or partying or studying or even work.
Professors who agree with protestors might well cut them a lot of slack.
A chunk of the protesters aren’t college students.
Some college students are from sufficiently privileged backgrounds that they don’t need to worry about taking care of themselves during the protest time and if they fail some courses and have to spend an extra year at college that’s no big deal to them.
Must university classes are very independent. The students are adults capable of taking responsibility for their own studies and are allowed to chose how they want to spend their time and so they learn things the best. So attendance is usually optional and there is just a few lectures a week. Study groups are organized by the students themselves. Not all subjects have classwork and those that do only have a couple each semester. There are of course exceptions and some subjects have stricter attendance policies and weekly mandatory work, most of these subjects are at collages but there are some in universities as well.
Adding to this most universities are into their exam period. Professors need time to grade all the exams before summer holidays so some exams are even starting now. And a lot of subjects have already gone through everything and is now refreshing for the exams. This is even more independent then the first months of the semester so students have lots of time to study on their own for the exams. It is also perfectly accepted that students stop studying for later exams and focus on their next exam so you would not force a student to attend a lecture or do mandatory work as they probably have an upcoming exam in another subject.
I am not saying students have no issues with protesting and studying for their exams at the same time. This is obviously an issue and they are probably going to get worse grades by protesting. But it is up to them how to spend their time and most of them do think that it is a case worth getting a lower grade for.
College is generally very flexible. Most classes are big lectures where professors don’t take attendance. Even attending all lectures takes ~15 hours/week. For most classes, there’s a midterm and final exam, maybe a paper or a presentation, but no daily or weekly homework to turn in. Reading can be done while camping out. Spending 10-15 hours in class and another 20-30 hours doing reading, homework, etc. would still leave a lot of time to be at the protest site, and I think that’s what most students are doing.
Most school’s semesters are over. Some students may still be finishing final exams, but the majority are done for the summer/graduated.
They’ve got plenty of time to protest now.
It’s very rare that a class requires attendance as a significant portion of the final grade. As long as they turn in their assignments and do well on the exams, no professor will ever care what the students do during a day.
College isn’t like high school where the entire student body has their butt in a classroom seat for 7 hours a day and will be punished if they aren’t where they supposed to be. College schedules might only have a couple classes per day, and unless there’s a test, there might not be attendance taken or any serious repercussions to not going. Your schedule likely doesn’t precisely match up with anyone else’s. It’s plausible that some of the protesters are going to class and returning to the protest. Others may be risking their grades and skipping class.
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