Cambridge, Mass.—As zero hour for the heroic faculty-blessed student May Day walkout neared, rally organizers at Harvard handed out pink placards and permanent markers for those young on-the-go revolutionaries who felt ever-so passionately about immigration issues but never got around to doing their protest prep work.

Most Kids diligently copied Spanish slogans from a handy protest guide. If the few signs in English were any indication, though, the brevity of thought did no one any favors. A $42,000-a-year Harvard education may challenge the mind and open doors of opportunity hitherto welded shut, but it apparently leaves young graduates interested in creating effective-yet-wryly-hip signage ill-prepared.

"WHO WILL CLEAN YOUR HOTELS? " one young woman wrote in bold block letters. I was sure this must be an ironic ruse perpetrated by a clever counter-protester until its author happily nestled herself between "WHO WOULD JESUS DEPORT?" and "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DIDN’T NEED A VISA" sign holders.

On the outskirts of the 500-strong crowd more “subversive” (“scare quotes” indicate “not really”) students in homemade hammer-and-sickle shirts mingled amongst Harvard Square’s ever-present scraggly old dyed-in-the-wool Maoist commies. Progress Harvard style: The Sino-Soviet Split of yore salved in the warmly inviting bosom of the bourgeoisie. I passed a gaggle of the pro-Mao guys (Care for a little genocide with your famine?) hawking “Revolution: Voice of the Communist Party, USA,” which declares “the whole system we live under is based on exploitation” and “completely worthless.”

“You want to know the truth on immigration?” one said, jerking a thumb at the newspaper. “It’s all in here.”

“Is it free?” I asked.

“Donation,” he answered, but when I pulled out a couple of quarters he frowned. “A buck, if you got it.”

I had one. Maybe whole capitalism thing isn’t completely worthless after all. The revolution table was busy. The kid next to me was wearing a messenger bag festooned with patches declaring himself an “Anti-fascist” prepared to “Fight Racism!” and even one with a little cartoon of a rat with a Hitler moustache captioned “Run, Nazi, Run!” A real rebel would have patched “Run, Trust Fund Baby, Run!” or “Anti-Metrosexual” on his bag.

Then, as if the gods had turned on the "TIME TO CHANT" sign in the sky, tribal drumming on empty water jugs echoed off the walls and the people—the freakin' people, man—began shouting in unison. The protest guide conveniently listed a series of chants “to be said in order unless otherwise noted.” A nice bit of structured authoritarianism to go along with the left-wing holiday. “2,4,6,8, America’s immigrants cannot wait! 3,5,7,9, working hard is not a crime.” Not that any of this bunch had to worry about being hauled in for that this day. “E-du-ca-tion, not deportation”—presumably unless it’s Mom and Dad deporting you to a super-sweet semester abroad in some chic European city. “The youth united, will never be defeated.” And, finally, the old Caesar Chavez standard “Si, se Puede!”. (“Yes, we can!”)

Eventually, a series of speakers took to the steps alongside the famous statue of John Harvard, preaching unity but ultimately serving only to dismiss anyone in favor of anything short of immediate, complete amnesty.

Professor Tim McCarthy—author of To Criticize Perpetually: Teaching American Protest Literature, From Tom Paine to Tupac—followed up a touching tribute to the “hard toil, sacrifice and stubborn aspirations of those who came before me,” declaring that “Anti-immigrant sentiment is in many ways as American as apple pie.” Cheers followed. Was it simply enthusiastic agreement on a stand alone point? Or does anything even remotely resembling a slag against America, warranted or not, bring out the Harvard crowd’s joie de vivre? Other speakers caricatured amnesty opponents as "racist."

And speaking of cartoonish: As the rally was winding down, two students decided to present a new version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” punctuated with ludicrous spoken-word segments name-checking Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos (“We are here because you were there”), the School of the Americas, and over-the-top rhyming-couplet fantasies about U.S. Border Patrol “firing artillery at families.”

Alas, this mix of pseudo-intellectualism and pretentious poetry lasted only a few minutes before it was time to meet the riff-raff down on Boston Common for the mega-rally. A contingent of Boston police on motorcycles and bikes pulled up to escort the crowd along their marching route. The water-jug drummers beat away. The old-school commies packed up their rickety revolution stands. As the marchers moved on, chants of “Si, se puede” gave way to “Let us dream, let us dream.”

Dreaming, perhaps, of a day when faux-rebel walkouts will matter outside the insular confines of Harvard Yard.

—Shawn Macomber is a writer in Boston. He runs the website Return of the Primitive.