I'm not against protesting per se, mind you. Some protests are for good causes, and some people who protest are motivated by sincere conviction. But I think that much of the time, there’s also something else going on. There's a sort of culture of protest that assumes it's just a part of the college experience, something you do because it’s just cool.

You can understand that an issue like war would bring out strong feelings that would lead to demonstrations, regardless of whether you agree with whichever side is demonstrating. The trouble is, for some people, any cause is a reason to mount the barricades.

Take what happened at the University of Georgia several weeks ago. There, students rallied against the forced leave-of-absence of UGA men’s basketball coach Jim Harrick Sr. Harrick’s assistant coach and son, Jim Harrick Jr., was accused of providing gifts and illegal money to a player. There have also been accusations of SAT “irregularities.” Harrick Jr. was fired, and his father resigned a few weeks later. Harrick Sr. has previously come under fire at Pepperdine, UCLA and University of Rhode Island for similar violations of NCAA rules. Not the sort of guys you’d think of as martyrs, are they? Still, the students held protests.

Christian institutions aren’t immune to the protesting phenomenon. At the seminary I attend, student protests were held in 1995 when a theology professor was terminated for, among other things, teaching universalism — the decidedly un-Christian notion that all human beings will eventually be saved. Students gathered in a large group outside the library, sang “negro spirituals” (it must have been quite a sight to see 200 white students singing songs about freedom from slavery) and demanded that the professor be reinstated. A filmmaker found the whole scene so intriguing he made a documentary about the whole experience, naturally making out the dissenting students to be real heroes.

Fact is, some students will protest just about anything. Among the things protested in the last three decades are segregation, desegregation, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Afghanistan, the hiring of faculty, the firing of faculty, the invitation to certain dignitaries to speak, the barring of certain dignitaries from speaking, women’s rights, minority rights, homosexual rights, religious rights, animal rights, abortion rights, higher wages for campus hourly employees, the elimination of certain programs, and of course the war with Iraq.

I suppose the significance of each of these issues depends upon your perspective. But my point here isn’t to identify which causes are good and which ones bad. It’s to note that somehow, invariably, they always lead pretty quickly to some sort of demonstration. It appears that in many institutions of American higher education (Berkeley and many Ivy League schools, for example), protesting has become an important if unofficial part of getting an education. Not to everyone: Most students focus on their grades and their social lives. Yet to a certain element, it’s a rite of passage, a voyage into adulthood, an academic bar mitzvah. What worth is a college degree if you’ve never stood in front of the administrative building holding up a posterboard sign demanding some heinous wrong be righted by those who hold the power? (Besides, it's easy these days: With the help of the Internet, you can organize a protest over just about anything in a matter of hours.)

As Americans, we have the right to protest those things we disagree with. Personally, I have great respect for evangelicals who are passionately protesting such atrocities as abortion and the neglect of the African AIDS pandemic. My liberal friends could well make the same claim about those who protest for other causes. Still, you can spend too much time at it. There are of course some instances where taking time out of studying for midterms to stage a protest might be justifiable. But I think many observers, both conservative and liberal, would agree that American students have an unhealthy fascination with protests, regardless of the reason for the demonstrations.

I guess my biggest question is why this obsession with protesting? Where’s the education in all of this? Yes, everyone knows that college is about more than a formal academic education. College is also about character and personality development, growing into the adult that you will be for the rest of your life. Does mass protesting (in most cases) really contribute that much to someone preparing for post-college life out in the real world? I doubt it.

I do get why all this happens. Frankly, it’s an emotional rush for many students to be out there on the front lines, telling ‘em like it is. I just hope that we all remember that college is about much more than being heard by the powers that be. It’s about more than being counter-cultural or in-your-face. It’s about getting an education, figuring out what you want to do with your life, and then going forth after graduation to fulfill that destiny.

Concentrating on studies benefits us much more in the long run than protesting everything that ruffles our feathers. Who knows, maybe if students wouldn’t protest so much, it’d be more effective when genuinely worthy causes do come along. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. Until then, I’ll study for my classes, silently protesting the fact that I have so many assignments to complete and so little semester left.