Reference no: EM132196501

Student behavior is somewhat paradoxical when it comes to political participation. On one hand, students have been very active on college campuses at various times over the past half-century. In fact if you look at the beginning of several historical social movement it was begun by young people on college campuses. Many students became politically active in the 1960s as part of the civil rights movement, with some joining campus groups that promoted civil rights, while others supported groups that opposed these rights. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, college campuses were very active in opposition to the Vietnam War. More recently, in 2015, students at the University of Missouri protested against the university system president, who was accused of not taking racial issues at the university seriously. The student protests were supported by civil rights groups like the NAACP, and their efforts culminated in the president’s resignation.Links to an external site. Yet at the same time, students participate by voting and joining groups at lower rates than members of other age cohorts. Several researchers have hypothesized as to why this is the case, that students can play such an important role in facilitating political change in some cases, while at the same time they are typically less active than other demographic groups. Are there groups on campus that represent issues important to you? Are you involved? Why or why not?