El facultad ha sido tomado.

“The building has been taken over.” Emblazoned on a gargantuan sheet of construction paper, those words greeted all visitors to the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) campus on Ramos Mejia street. Words you would expect to see in a war zone, not at a university.

Inside, students locked all the classrooms and pushed the chairs into the hallways. Professors unwilling to cede their precious class time led impromptu discussions amidst a scene of mild chaos. Students and revolutionaries alike roamed the hallways, handing out pamphlets explaining the takeover. A local radio station started broadcasting from a table near the front entrance. Bewildered foreigners stood in shock, trying to take in all the commotion.

As any porteno (a Buenos Aires native) will tell you, the revolutionary spirit is alive and well in Argentina’s capital. Protests and demonstrations are as much a part of the city as delicious food and mate. Plus, in general college students are in their “protest prime”—the period of one’s life in which they are most likely to fight back.

In high school my United States history teacher, Mr. Hicks, once made this offer: an automatic A for anyone who could organize a walkout. “The food in the cafeteria is bad, but not that bad,” I remember thinking. Really, we didn’t have much to complain about. We went to a clean, well-funded, safe school. I feel the same way about Northwestern and every other university I’ve visited. Yeah, some schools get more funding. And yes, some have better facilities. But at the end of the day, I’ve been lucky enough to attend some of our country’s premier institutions.

Anyone who’s strolled through an UBA building knows that the facilities are nowhere near equivalent to the university’s reputation as one of the best on the continent. To make matters worse, students and administrators have been on different wavelengths (to put it nicely) for some time, making for a palpable tension. So when two glass structures collapsed at a nearby UBA building, injuring a bystander, a group of students took the initiative and took over the school. A walkout by lockout.

This is far from the first time something like this has happened—students took over the building as recently as 2008—so it wasn’t as fascinating for everyone as it was for me. I discussed the issue over coffee with a group of Argentines from my class. For the most part they were nonchalant, not really concerned with the “what” or “why.”

Some students, however, were more passionate about the situation. I filmed the accompanying video at a rally later that night, in which several hundred students came to listen to speeches from classmates and teachers. The energy was electric. Several particularly rousing orators evoked huge waves of applause, and after every speaker the crowd broke out in chants and songs.

(Believe it or not, this was the first time I have ever filmed a rally in a foreign country while standing on a chair in the middle of a large crowd. Please excuse the shaky camera.)

I can’t say I agree with everything these students were doing, or why they were doing it. But watching students fight tooth-and-nail for services that I had always taken for granted is something I’ll remember for a while.

Mr. Hicks would be proud.