Boston University’s campus, buzzing with political activity as the election season comes to a close, is no stranger to involvement in the nation’s political scene.
Professor Chris Daly, a College of Communication professor who has been at BU for 15 years, said there is inherently more political engagement during election years, but today’s college political scene is much quieter compared to when he was a student in Boston in the early ‘70s.
“There was so much student activism going on in terms of protesting the war and I feel like it has been rather boring since then,” he said. “This protest was the politics of the streets, the politics of the campus.”
Daly, a Harvard University student at the time, said in 1972, the year of the first presidential election in which he could vote, he remembers attending a Vietnam War protest in front of the BU National Guard Armory, now BU’s Fitness and Recreation Center.
“The Republican party was holding a fundraiser with obscene amounts of money for the time,” he said. “The main focus of the protest was condemning Nixon for keeping us in the war and spending so much money.”
The T tracks divided the cops and protesters who lined the streets, Daly said. Protesters paid a penny for dinners of brown rice and apples.
“Then, of course, like they always foolishly do, Boston police decided to try and restore law and order,” he said. “Cops on horseback started to charge the crowd — it looked like something out of Dr. Zhivago and the Russian Revolution.”
With a college career peppered with protests such as that demonstration, Daly said the political scene is comparatively less exciting in 2012.
Sharon Price, a School of Management alumna who graduated in 1983, said she remembers a more restrained national political atmosphere, but still recalls a politically involved campus.
“Some of my friends ran a full ticket for political office in my sophomore year, but did not win,” she said. “I do remember a lot of interest in that [the 1982] campaign.”
BU has always drawn a number of important political figures to come and speak, Price said.
“I have memories of seeing Tip O’Neill speak on campus,” she said. “Yes, it was well attended. I believe a full house. I don’t recall the specifics of his speech. It was mostly about his impressive career and working in Congress.”
Daly said during the 2008 presidential elections, students were more excited because then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was fresh on the scene.
“But this year, he is promoting a more conservative message by way of saying that we should just stay the course,” he said.
Although political activism seems to be decreasing since the 1970s, the youth is still a major focus of the campaigns, Daly said.
“Students and young graduates work very hard to be engaged,” he said. “They are the ones running this campaign.”
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