Last week’s Genocide Awareness Project served to shed some light on the political and social life on this campus. Our campus has historically been an active place for protest, especially during the Vietnam [War] era, but yesterday’s protest against the Center for Bioethical Reform was lackluster.
While I sympathize both politically and ethically with the protestors, they lacked enthusiasm and the right direction. The strength of the protestors’ beliefs is not in question, but personally I would never — and did not — let “Free Speech Area” and “Videotaping in Progress” signs, nor the seven uniformed police officers who attended, turn me into a mere sign holding “other.”
The fact that Friendship Walk became the enforced divide between free speech and propaganda is as sad as it is ironic.
While it is essential for the student body to immediately address specific issues that present themselves on campus, the true focus of reform should be on the campus administrators who allow groups like the Center for Bioethical Reform and the ubiquitous “Sinner!” sign-wielding nuts to disturb our learning environment.
We pay a lot of money for the use of this campus and we should expect it to be a place for enrichment and growth, not hate and divisiveness.
Our country and our campus is one big “Free Speech Area,” so if you are fed up when you pass an unavoidable image of a dead infant or an enormous sign that condemns 95 percent of the campus population as sinners, make your feelings known to both its bearer and the campus officials who welcomed them.
-John Azzaretto,
senior history major and Associated Students Inc. archivist