Damage to property by students is not a validation of their cause
It has almost been accepted as a validation of strength for any students strike action in the Institutions of higher learning that damaging University properties must form part of the sum whole in exercising this rather democratic right. This is extremely distasteful and abhorrent to phantom from the most enlightened section of our youth. But more disturbing is the degenerate quality of leadership at this level from those elected as SRCs to provide leadership.
In our generation during our student life period, we led numerous strikes each year based on specific issues and we resorted to this tactic, after all methods of addressing the matters especially through negotiations have reached a cul-de-suc. This was a tactic to impose a positional shift from the management and foster trade-offs in our favour. This, we always did with much success. The planning and coordination of the strike action was always meticulous, stage-managed and its crescendo and tempo well guided.
Honestly, in any course of action such as mass actions, always, there will be spoilers and agent provocateurs who will resort to all manner of sordid and criminal acts. These diversions are as old as protest actions themselves. This is the similar case in trade union strikes at times. But the task of the leadership is in ensuring that before even the strike action begins, the strong message is genuinely sent to students and marshals are appointed from student organisations to control crowds every day. Daily briefings by leaders and house committees to students is maintained all the time.
Bona fide leaders are those that command authority to their constituency; genuine leaders lead by principle and are always willing to be unpopular to those that they lead. A leader that speaks in forked tongue to the led and always recoils when difficult times come, are not leaders but are merely anything adjacent to that description.
I don't remember being part of a strike that resulted in the damage to property. We always knew that our quarrel with the management must not translate into any thing other than fighting them on issues at hand using this democratic right to strike. Winning public high moral ground was always primary. We knew that University belongs to us and future generations of students to come and therefore must be protected at all cost.