Students for a Democratic Society, the 1960's left-wing student group that returned to the Brown campus last spring, launched a "Disorientation Guide" in January as part of its effort to encourage student involvement with social justice issues.
The Brown chapter, which formed again last year after the SDS regional New England conference held at the University in April, is part of a nationwide movement that began in January 2006 to restart SDS on college campuses.
Brown's SDS chapter created the Disorientation Guide to inform incoming first-years about social justice groups on campus and how they could get involved. SDS member Yesenia Barragan '08 said the guide contains "basic information about how to be an organizer at Brown." It includes brief descriptions that SDS members collected from every social justice organization on campus.
"This would be an amazing thing to find in your mailbox if you're looking for activism," said SDS member Vale Cofer-Shabica '09. "I would have loved to have gotten it as a freshman," he said, adding that SDS placed the 1,600 copies of the guide in the mailboxes of all first-year students. SDS members also placed cardboard boxes in the P.O. in which students who do not want to keep their Disorientation Guides can recycle them.
SDS member Michael Da Cruz '08.5 said the group is "trying to be a catalyst towards approaching the University in a more democratic way." In addition to the publishing the guide, SDS has finished designing its Web site, Brownsjn.org. He added that SDS at Brown is also looking to "build a more serious student community and integrate it into Providence."
Paul Buhle, senior lecturer in American civilization and an influential member of the original SDS at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said the John Nicholas Brown Center will host a show on Apr. 13 based on comic panels from the book, "SDS: A Graphic History," which he co-authored with illustrator Gary Dumm. At the opening, which will be presented by the Department of American Civilization, Dumm and graphic artist Harvey Pekar of "American Splendor" will deliver presentations. The exhibit on SDS's history will then travel for 18 months.
Though the SDS of the 1960s was linked to protest against the Vietnam War, Barragan said lessons from the original SDS are valuable for a new generation of members and activists.
"They offer an experience that is incredibly unique," she said. "They went through all the problems and difficulties of the 1960s. Those learning experiences are essential to forming our position as organizers now and in the future."
SDS's name grew out of Student League for Industrial Democracy, the successor of socialist youth groups that first formed in the 1910s at several Ivy League colleges.
"(SDS) led student mobilization against the war, against the draft and against university complicity with the war," Buhle said. In 1965, SDS became the leading anti-war student organization and grew consistently until 1969, when its membership was estimated at 20,000 and its general, unofficial following estimated at 100,000, Buhle said.
"That year SDS fell into disarray, split dramatically and collapsed, as did other similar New Left organizations," Buhle said of the group's demise in 1969. SDS failed to spread its idea of revolutionary change beyond the college campus, he said. "We were trapped as a student milieu."
But Buhle said Brown's SDS record was "spotty." Even though SDS demonstrations were not large and the group struggled to stay in existence, general student activism had an impact at Brown: Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98 led a successful campaign against ROTC, and others advocated the adoption of the New Curriculum.
"There is a constant tug between what can we do differently and how can we hold on to the useful icons of the 1960's," Buhle said of SDS's resurgence. "SDS now has 250 chapters and several thousand members, growing much faster than the original SDS."
SDS member Will Pasley '07 said the group plans to work on a tuition freeze campaign and an effort to make Brown libraries accessible to Providence residents. The group also hopes to have more input from other groups in next year's "Disorientation Guide," he said.
Cofer-Shabica said the group's new Web site would allow SDS to promote social justice more broadly.
"The Internet allows for contact with students in small colleges, in community colleges, in places where it is not likely there would be SDSers," he said. "This is an experiment in participatory democracy. Everyone participates, it is not hierarchal."
