On a chilly, gray afternoon one year ago this week, about 100 NIU students took their grievances about higher education budget cuts to the streets.

They said they were fed up with tuition hikes and the ignorance paid them by legislators in response to their pleas for more funding for state universities. The cuts they protested, they said, were the kind that “never heal.”

On that “Day of Action”—Oct. 22, 1987—100 students blocked Lincoln Highway for seven or eight minutes, carried signs, chanted and marched to have their message heard after a series of speeches in King Memorial Commons. Their message was heard, all right—in a sense.

Signs posted all around campus (even spray painted in some cases) for weeks before the Day of Action I had promised some large-scale response to the state legislature’s actions, but few people knew exactly what to expect.

The media caught on quickly to the implications of civil disobedience, and the protesters in the streets were joined by a batallion of writers, photographers and TV cameramen. What was seen in the papers, on TV and heard on the radio that night and the next day prompted various responses.

Probably the most common response was, “What do those damn college kids think they’re doing?” A similar reaction was, “They’re taking us back to the crazy rioting of the sixties all over again!”

These were the responses of people from many different walks of life: legislators, businessmen, factory workers, parents, teachers, even other students.

Six months later, on Day of Action II, NIU protesters went a little further. On April 13 of this year, 79 people were arrested for blocking Lincoln Highway again. You can bet the media was there again, and the same incredulous sentiments were expressed.

It doesn’t stop there. More than 100 students broke up the Board of Regents meeting here last month in protest of the dismissal of CHANCE counselor Martha Palmer. This protest came about an hour-and-a-half after two Student Association members asked the Regents to proceed with caution in raising students’ tuition any more, since the Regents recently had approved former NIU President Clyde Wingfield’s controversial $85,000 job in Washington.

A couple of questions come to mind concerning the campus activism of the past year. One is—were these protest actions all that radical?

Relatively speaking, no. Relative, that is, to the protests of 18 years ago at NIU. For example, in the wake of the Kent State killings, 500 angry students stormed Lowden Hall in May of 1970, smashing windows and dumping university records. An extreme example of activism, but typical of the time.

Does that mean the more recent protesters’ actions were “all right” or appropriate? Not necessarily.

Taking over a Regents meeting by force and subjecting hapless drivers on Lincoln Highway to unexpected and unwanted roadblocks probably were not, in themselves, the best actions to take in those particular situations. The attention of the media and the mass public was gained in both situations, but the messages seemed misguided, and the responses were decidedly negative.

So does this, in turn, make the protesters wrong? No. Here’s my reasoning for the seeming paradox …

The students who were sincere in their civil disobedience, who really wanted to get messages across to the “right” people, should be commended. There are too many students at this campus who deride the legislature and the Regents each semester for forcing tuition hikes down our throats, without attempting to do anything about it.

Those who keep aware of issues and at least try to make a difference deserve some admiration.

Students steeped in apathy are going to (a.) be left behind in the dust of tuition hikes and (b.) get fat from eating too many Doritos in front of their MTV. Beware.