Occupy protests spread to US college campuses

"Many people at the protests which I'm going to are out there because of the student debt crisis," said Kyle McCarthy, 29, who started the website.

IN PICTURES: Wall Street protests

Like the larger Occupy protests, the students have not articulated specific goals, but say that isn't necessary, at least for the time being.

"If you look at successful social movements, their role has never been to lay out the specifics of policy details," said Guido Girgenti, 19, a sophomore at Occidental College.

He pointed to Martin Luther King, Jr. as one example.

"Dr. King traveled around America dramatizing the moral crisis that was the disenfranchisement of blacks in America," he said. "The Occupy Wall Street movement in the same way is dramatizing the moral crisis of economic injustice and the corporate takeover of democracy."

Girgenti, who has been working with Occupy Colleges, says students are working on a draft statement on a commitment to nonviolence and training organizers.

"Our core student organizers are coming together and asking, how do we make the transition from moment of protest to moment of movement?" Girgenti said.

In order to go from protest to movement, Self said students must shape grievances into demands. He noted that issues like finding a way to lower tuition are complicated by the fact that many fees at public universities are set by individual state boards and legislatures and would be difficult or impossible to address at a federal level.

Arthur, however, said the changes protesters are seeking go beyond fixes like lowering tuition.

"Those things are nice, but it's not going to change fundamentally the things that are at the root of the grievances the movement has," she said. "Those kinds of changes are much harder to enact politically, it's culturally where the change has to happen. And that cultural change is something already happening every day in the encampment, in the participatory nature of the meeting."

At Florida International University, two days of talks by professors and speeches ended with students sharing their stories and participating in group activities.

In one, they divided into groups of five and picked an issue they had to illustrate through a student still life. One group chose "the balancing act of the average American;" another the "1 percent of students who get to sit in class and pay attention."

One student sat in a chair looking at the professor, while the others were scrambling in the background worried about how to pay and dropping out.

Tarafa, an organizer with the group Seed305, went up to each one and asked what they were feeling.

"Backwards," said one.

"Awkward," said another. "It's not enough."

The Monitor's Weekly News Quiz for Nov. 13-18, 2011

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