In 1969, students took control of Ford and Sydeman Halls, demanding better minority representation on campus. In 1975, they took over Perlman Hall to pressure the University to rescind their cutbacks in the next year's budget. In 1986, they built a shantytown to protest the University's involvement with South Africa. And this past weekend, students joined hundreds of others in Dewey Square as part of Occupy Boston in an effort to regain our generation's voice.

Occupy Wall Street began in the middle of downtown Manhattan as a movement for thousands of people to express their frustration with corporate greed and to restore democracy. The protests, which started on the Brooklyn Bridge, are now popping up in various cities across the country and flooding the media everywhere. This past Thursday night, over 50 students gathered on the Great Lawn in an effort to join the movement that is now storming Boston.

Some attended because they are worried that rising corporate power has stripped us of our rights as individuals. International students there were frustrated by the large amounts of money they owe the government for coming to the U.S. to study. Many were concerned about how major global decisions are being made today. Most felt an eager need to take back our generation's rights and have their voices heard.

"People are realizing how amazing this is that we can take our democracy back [and] convene as people," said Shea Riester '12, who took his sleeping bag down to Wall Street, to join the New York protests on the weekend of Sept. 17 and is now working to help spread the movement to Boston and Brandeis.

"We all think we have no voice, that there are just people up there who make all the decisions," Riester said about our generation. "But we can gather, and we can say, ‘I don't agree with this,' and we should propose something else. We can organize. We have the power of people versus the power of money. That's our power, and that's what this is about," he said.

As occupations branch off from Wall Street and spread to other cities miles away from New York, procedures and key features of the general assemblies remain uniform throughout the nation, echoing tactics of the revolutionary Arab Spring movement, which similarly aimed to restore democracy.

With no formal leaders at the first Brandeis general assembly on Thursday night, a small group of students acted as facilitators after attending larger discussions in New York and Boston and seeing how meetings are run. Students were able to take turns proposing agenda items to discuss, and anyone with questions, opinions or information had the chance to speak.

"This tactic of occupation and this form of direct democracy, the way meetings are held and organized [is] amazing," Riester said.

The first item proposed for the agenda was to hear about experiences from those who had already attended occupations both on Wall Street and in Boston. Beginning with Aaron Markiewitz '15, who described marching with hundreds of others to Zuccotti Park in New York for the first general assembly, stories varied from watching peaceful civilians beaten by police officers on the Brooklyn Bridge to more humorous stories of dumpster diving for salads and bagels to eat at the occupation in New York.

As each anecdote sparked another comment, the discussion moved quickly around the circle between passionate and opinionated students.

"Our government isn't providing [for] our needs anymore, and it's not even listening to us when we say that it's not providing our needs," Dorian Williams '13 said. "I think what this movement is really about is taking things back into our own hands. … What we're trying to do is turn things around and take back control," she said.

Following the first general assembly on campus, which lasted an hour, 10 students boarded a chartered bus together to join hundreds of others at a larger gathering in Dewey Square in downtown Boston, where they discussed the possibility of creating the first statements of what the movement believes in.

To accommodate the masses of people camping out in Boston as part of the occupation, protestors set up a tent village in Dewey Square. Streets are designated to different necessities and assigned jobs, such as dealing with media or providing information and food. This past weekend, a group of Brandeis students borrowed tent equipment from the Mountain Club to join the community Occupy Boston has built.

"These are little communities. You can get medical attention, mental health attention, … there's a religious group. It's really trying to build a safe space not only physically but emotionally and intellectually to be able to share your ideas," Williams said.

And while Yom Kippur fell Friday night and Saturday in the midst of a full schedule of events, over 100 people gathered in Dewey Square on Friday evening for a prayer service organized by Yael Shinar '03 and Jocelyn Berger '04. Current Brandeis students, alumni, students from other universities and various protestors prayed together prior to attending the general assembly, which takes place at 7 p.m. every evening.

"It was just this amazing feeling of significance and meaning and power to what we were doing in the midst of Friday night, South Station, downtown Boston," Berger said.

"I think the message of Yom Kippur is so applicable to this point in time and what the movement is trying to say. … [It's about] the balance between forgiveness and transformation," she said.

In addition to students spending much of this past weekend in Boston and attending yesterday's Student Solidarity March, those involved on campus also created media and logistics groups, as well as a Twitter account to keep the movement on campus active and growing. A second general assembly will be held this Thursday night on the Great Lawn to decide how to move forward and plan more trips into Boston.

Though not all students on campus feel the same passion and agreement for the movement, criticizing what may seem like a lack of goals for the occupation and viewing those involved as "socialist pigs or anarchists," according to Riester, his hope is that they will also join the dialogue and voice their opinions.

And while it was harder for Riester to articulate what the movement was when he first went down to Wall Street almost a month ago, only knowing things needed to be changed, he says the movement is now taking on form as it grows and progresses.

With new occupations sprouting up every few days as different states, towns or cities join the movement, "this is the beginning of something huge," Riester said.