Where is activism at UNLV?

On a cool February night in 1967, several students climbed atop one of Nevada Southern University's classroom buildings and, fed up with the state's stingy governor, hanged him in effigy.

Nevada Southern -- it wouldn't become UNLV for another two years -- was battling for funding with its big brother, the University of Nevada, Reno.

Prompted by not only the funding issue but also an unpopular war and the civil rights movement, students at NSU in the late 1960s engaged in a level of activism not seen before or since at what has traditionally been a commuter school.

Forty years later, there are striking parallels. The Iraq war rages on. Hispanic groups protest and march. Gov. Jim Gibbons is threatening to slash millions from UNLV's budget.

Yet students at Nevada's largest university are experiencing what some describe as an unprecedented level of apathy, leaving them to wonder: Where have all the activists gone?

"It's really disheartening," said Joe Sacco, who continued to stage on-campus protests for various issues after he graduated in 2003. "It makes me wonder, how far do we need to be pushed as a society in order to start standing up?"

Despite the university's reputation as a commuter school, one where campus activity rarely rises above the level of an occasional complaint by a student over lack of parking, students four decades ago were champions of their university.

When the campus was just 10 years old, and then only a branch of UNR, students rallied for autonomy, more state funding and a name change, according to UNLV history professor Eugene Moehring, who this year published a book on the history of the university.

"The one thing that unified them all was budget cuts," Moehring said. "It was seen as Reno trying to keep down Vegas."

Donald Moyer, 88, who was president at Nevada Southern University from 1964 to 1969, said students put pressure on regents and state officials through protests and that he and other university leaders encouraged this activity.

"We played that case hard: 'The big dog Reno is trying to eat our funding all the time,'" Moyer said. "The students we had, they did unbelievable things. They really put themselves on the line."

The students hanged then-Gov. Paul Laxalt in effigy in full view of passing motorists on Maryland Parkway, according to Moehring's book.

Times have changed.

"There's a lot of student apathy right now," said UNLV College Republicans President Ciara Turns. "It kind of worries me. Young people are always the ones that make the difference" in society.

Her organization has about 300 members on its e-mail list, but only five of them ever participate in events, she said. They haven't had a meeting yet this semester.

She said the UNLV Young Democrats, the leaders of which she said she is friends with, is also plagued with apathy. A call to the president of the organization was not returned.

With a presidential election looming and UNLV's reputation as a relatively conservative campus, Turns said she expected it would be easier to recruit students.

In an attempt to explain the apathy, she continued, "I honestly think it's a genuine inability to relate to the world around them."

Still, the university has been host to several protests over the past few years, many of which were sponsored by Hispanic student organizations.

A year ago, students protested an ordinance to make English the official language of Pahrump.

But the last significant protest that exacted change on campus was in 1999, when hundreds of students rallied against controversial practices by UNLV police.

The protests resulted in the sacking of the police chief and the establishment of an oversight committee to monitor police department policies.

University system Regent Steve Sisolak said he has seen the decline in activism even among student government leaders at Nevada's colleges and universities.

"I've noticed in the last eight or nine years, students don't speak as much as they used to," he said. "I don't know if they're torn on the issues or they're too busy to speak out or what. I don't want to believe that the administration is putting pressure on them."

It's not as if students don't have issues to unite them.

Budget cuts by the governor in the order of about $20 million in the next two years at UNLV could result in larger class sizes and usher in steep fee increases for students. Environmental concerns multiply. The Iraq war continues to be unpopular, but, unlike the Vietnam War, there is no draft this time around to inflame students, Moehring said.

UNLV professor and sociologist Robert Parker said the perception of activism has also changed over the past four decades into something where activists are seen as "nuts and conspiracy theorists" and largely work alone, not in groups.

Take the University of Florida student who made headlines after being shocked by Taser-wielding police. "There's an activist for you. He was very independent," Parker said.

Yet when the student pleaded with police not to be shocked, "There's his colleagues, his young friends, laughing at it and taking pictures and filming."

Today's student is far different from the student of the 1960s, Parker and others say.

They have far more sources of information than previous generations. They're bombarded by advertisements and brand names. They just don't have as much free time as students did 40 years ago, in part because they spend more time working.

But young people today are used to getting what they want immediately, which rarely happens during demonstrations, Sacco said.

"I think that a lot of people don't want to get involved in something without a guaranteed payoff," he said.

At most urban universities such as UNLV, students are older than the norm, work more and are more likely to have children than ever before, said Rebecca Mills, UNLV vice president for student life.

But Mills stopped short of calling students "apathetic."

For all the criticism that students today are lazy or ill-informed on current events, they are engaging in a high level of volunteerism.

About 30 percent of college students in 2006 were engaged in some sort of volunteering, with tutoring and mentoring the most common activities, according to data from the Corporation for National & Community Service, an Associated Press report last year noted.

The number of students volunteering jumped nearly 20 percent between 2002 and 2005.

Because fewer students today read newspapers, follow current events or get involved in politics -- yet volunteer more -- New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has dubbed them Generation Q: the Quiet Americans.

There are signs that, at UNLV at least, administrators are trying to get students more engaged in the community, in volunteerism if not in activism.

During its unique town hall meetings this year to determine the university's future, officials talked about requiring more classes in "civic engagement."

"Civic engagement" courses could include business classes, for example, that would require students to come up with a business plan for a non-profit company, or classes that would include some kind of community service.

"Part of a university education truly is trying to help them see they're part of a bigger whole, of being a responsible citizen," Mills said.

Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0440.