Page Six
THE SUMMER DAILY
WNednesdoy, June 27, 19711
French students reassess May '68
EDITOR'S NOTE: Five years ago, French
students, Joined by workers, rose in are
hellion that shook the nation. A new sorder
was going to be created, they said back that
May 1968. What has happened since? What
is the coliete situation like now? Here is a
report from the scene.
By JOHN VINOCUR
Associated Press Writer
PARIS-"Yoo-hoo," a girl yelled mock-
ingly. "Five years later and guess who's
back?"-
The single voice was soon a chorus. A
street fol of demonstrators, thousands,
tens of thousands of high school and uni-
versity students, dungareed, wild-haired,
shooting loud enough about a tough new
conscription law and new educational pro-
cedures to stir vivid memories of May,
1968.
"COUCOU, nous revoila-Yoo-hoo, here
we are again"
Ithappened in the streets of Paris in
April-more yelling, more banner waving,
bigger crowds than anyone had seen
since students detonated the revolutionary
test blast that shook France for a month
five years ago.
It all seemed to have started just the
same way before. There was a clever
speech-maker named Michel Field, red-
haired and menacing enough to remind
people of the '68 top rebel Danny "The
Red" Cohn-Bendit.
AND THERE WAS more: fine demon-
strating weather, concurrent labor prob-
lems at the Renault and Citroen auto
plants to go with the student issues, even
a nervous warning to the nation from
President Georges Pompidou.
"Hot, hot," the students shouted. "It's
going to be a hot spring."
And then-nothing. A few skirmishes
with the CRS riot police and Field telling
the education minister on television that
he was a clown.
IT RAINED on May Day, not at all a
good sign. Before it ever really began,
the long hot spring that was supposed to
have been trickled away into the catch
basins between La Bastille and Place de
la Republique.
THERE WAS no new revolt, no new
student-worker union of forces, no trace
of the May 1968 groundswell that paralyzed
France in a unique moment in postwar his-
tory. This time, the students went back to
class, took exams and seemed to lapse
into the quiet that has dominated the
Latin Quarter for the last five years.
don't think students can play the role of
detonator again the way they did in '68.
The student movement cannot show the
workers how to fight or how to win or
how to get what eluded them in '68.
But the students can show up a situation,
attract attention to it."
Clearly, French students got more out
of the 1968 rebellion than the workers
did; but beyond the vague call for chang-
"We don't think students can play the role of detonator
again the way they did in '68. The student movement
cannot show the workers how to fight or how to win or
how to get what eluded them in '68. But the students
can show up a situation, attract attention to it."
Michel Field, after a week or two in
the news magazines, picked up his books.
It looked like a return trip to anonymity,
the same one that Cohn-Bendit, Rudi
Dutschke in West Germany and Tariq Ali
in England all made after 1968.
But it would be a superficial analysis
to assume that French students, after
tentatively surfacing, are going to dis-
appear again. The issues that brought
them into the streets in April will be
virtually intact in the fall. And a new
generation, vastly more sophisticated poli-
tically than the elders of 1968, is entering
the universities with ideas on how stu-
dents could bring revolution to French
society.
"THEY ARE remarkably involved and
committed," said Pierre Rousset, one of
the 1968 leaders with Cohn-Bendit, who
heads the Trotskyist Ligue Communists
of which Field is a member.
"They showed how much unrest there
really is," he went on.
"There were actually more people in
the street in April than at any one point
in May five years ago. But we never
thought for a minute there could be 'a
new May.'
"IN SPITE of all the slogans, we always
said, 'no, it's not going to happen.' We
ing society, their demands now seem
minor, techmnical issues unrelated to the
deeper flow of life. Their appeals for
an end to the archaic lecture system, over-
crowding, a lack of student participation
in university decision-making and the cen-
tralization of the whole educational system
all brought reforms.
There are more courses now and a more
flexible system for taking them. The 22
universities in 1968 have grown to 65, and
the student population from 500,000 to
800,000.
BUT MANY STUDENTS still feel like
outsiders. "Once I get there, all I want
to do is go home," says Oliver Chatel, a
20-year-old pre-law student at Nanterre.
In elections to create joint faculty-
student committees on university manage-
ment, student participation runs from
seven to 25 per cent. "It's folklore," ac-
cording to Alain Friedlander, a 23-year-
old business student. "The administration
asks advice and then does what it damn
pleases. No one is fooled."
Even the change in class procedure that
has created small, 30- to 50-student sec-
tions where 1,000 or more used to cram
into a lecture hall is not completely
satisfactory.
"IT'S A LITTLE EERIE," said 20-year-
old Marina Rodna, a psychology student.
"You go into a seminar and everyone
makes these little presentations. Some-
times there's a prof who has contempt for
the whole proceedings, and he'll just
glower. But those are just details. What
I feel over the last two years is a real
politicization of students as a group. I
mean on every issue - jobs, women's
rights, the army, everything. And there's
more unanimity now on the big student
issues than anything since '68."
By the return to class in the flB, these
issues should be intensified. The April
demonstrations may have slowed up be-
cause of threats by the government and
because the issues were still not reality.
THE PRESENTATION of the issues all
has changed. There are rock bands now
and a less doctrinaire, less jargon-encased
vocabulary.
Organization has changed. The Sorbonne,
synonymous with the heart of the 1968
student movement, is less and less a cen-
ter of agitation. It now has classes be-
ginning only with the third university
year, eliminating most of the 19 to 21
age group in which militants traditionally
have found their widest audience.
And leaders have had to confront new
problems in coordinating activities in
Paris, which has 13 campuses.
ASSESSING THE five years since May
1968, Marie Martine Janicot found her
generation, now leaving school, still pro-
foundly affected-and strangely incapa-
citated-by them.
Friedlander, who considers himself as
belonging to the same group, has much
more faith in the high school students
that will enter the universities.
"THE NEW GENERATION doesn't have
the same lassitude we did. They're very
political kids, and I think they will be
much more easily mobilized. They don't
have to carry around the disappointment
of '68 with them. I don't dare say it will
all explode in the fall or any other time
again soon. But it's a new generation. And
willing."
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