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." ~1 FREE THE UOFM 5000! ANN ARBOR BANK OFFERS A WAY We want to ANN ARBOR be your bank. BANK MEBER ..D,.C. OVER 5000 STUDENTS ENTER THE U OF M EACH FALL. GOT BETTER THLNGS TO DO THAN STAND IN A BANK LINE WITH A MOB OF THEM?. ANN ARBOR BANK THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE TO AVOID THAT HASSLE. SO $1.00 WILL OPEN ANY CHECKING OR SAVINGS ACCOUNT -- NOW! WE'LL REMIND YOU TO MAKE A DEPOSIT IN TIME FOR FALL. AND THERE WILL BE NO CHECKING CHARGES UNTIL YOU USE YOUR ACCOUNT. 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