Every morning 1,500 students gather in front of Hendricks Chapel to decide the location of the day’s protests. Classes have been canceled by individual professors, and the university is expected to cancel all classes. The activists have taken construction materials from the not-yet-completed geology building and blocked off the traffic entrances to campus. Professors are teaching unauthorized classes. Flags are being burned in front of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the chancellor has moved his office into Sims Hall for protection.

The year is 1970.

The Vietnam War and student protests went hand in hand. In the spring of 1970 alone more than 200 college campuses witnessed demonstrations, including violent incidents occurring at Kent State University and the University of California, Berkley. But the most serious strike in the academic world took place at Syracuse University, when classes were canceled due to continuous demonstrations against the Cambodian invasion of 1970.

Flash forward to today. We are three years deep in the highly unpopular Iraq war, yet anyone who took a walk through the Quad last week can see the student body is perfectly content with some early spring sunshine.

‘The faculty talks more about (the Iraq war) than the students do,’ said David Bennett, professor of history at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Bennett was on campus as an associate professor in 1970 and is puzzled by the lack of engagement by the current students.

‘What you see in the papers and opinion polls is not reflected on college campuses,’ said Bennett, a professor of 43 years at Syracuse.

According to a New York Times poll published last week, 53 percent of politically independent respondents want U.S. troops to be brought home as soon as possible, and 37 percent believe things are going very well or fairly well in Iraq. Political analysts continually cite the war as overshadowing the domestic efforts of President George W. Bush. This war should be receiving attention from the American youth, whether for it or against it.

Bennett sees only a few major differences between the Iraq and Vietnam wars. There is no draft for the current war and the cost of human life has not been as high. But that does not undermine the significance of the war being waged in Iraq, which will dominate the economic and political agenda of the United States for years to come.

The question lies in the differences between our generation and the anti-Vietnam generation. It has been suggested that continued reminders to focus on academics and extra-curricular activities have shifted students’ mindsets from practicing activism to having sound resumes, but I don’t know if I buy that. Take when Ann Coulter came to speak, for example. The demonstrations were strong and mobilized very quickly, and Ann Coulter is just a harmless loudmouth.

In recent memory at SU, the only notable anti-war demonstration was the Student Environmental Action Coalition’s display of a single sign in the Quad, stating the death toll of Americans and Iraqi civilians accumulated by this war.

A civil war in Iraq may be imminent. The next three years of our foreign affairs policy will be crucial to the role of the United States in the 21st century. This is the time and the place to shape your beliefs and have your voice heard. Unless something changes, students 40 years from now will be writing essays on why the youth of America had nothing to say during the Iraq war.

We need more students talking about the war, the pros and the cons. We need to understand its necessity to the sovereignty of our nation and the consequences it has cost us in the eyes of our fellow nations. I’m not saying I want the anti-war students shutting down campus with a huge strike, but we need to hear a voice from every ideology within the student population. Talk about it in your dorm, your dining hall, the bars you patronize; these conversations need not be limited to a classroom in Eggers Hall.