RPI has joined the ranks of the dozens of locations around the country that have held anti-war rallies over the past several months. Last Friday, a group of students and concerned residents of Troy held a peace demonstration in front of the Union before moving on to a regional rally in Albany, and then a national rally in Washington.
Iraq’s alleged attempts at creating a weapon of mass destruction and the United States’ policy of “regime change” in Iraq have spawned an intense public debate.
“This campus was lacking any type of voice on this issue [of possible war in Iraq],” said Jennifer Warren ’03.
“We completely disagree with the [Bush Administration’s] tactics being implemented,” said organizer Donna Hope, an environmental engineering graduate student.
The students felt that diplomatic measures had been brushed aside and the “Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld War Trio” was moving toward immediate war.
Holding signs and shouting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, war is not the way to go,” the peace demonstrators engaged passers-by and encouraged people to write, call, or e-mail their congressmen to voice their opposition to the American military involvement in Iraq. Cars and trucks passing by honked as the activists displayed signs with slogans such as “No Blood for Oil,” “No War, No War, Not Now, Not Ever,” and “Retaliate Against Terrorism with Peace.”
“We think it should be an interesting realization for people that a campus that is so devoted to the military doesn’t entirely support President Bush,” said Hope.
Not everyone supported the call made by the peace demonstrators, however. The demonstrators were harangued by some drivers and passengers, and several students countered the demonstrators’ arguements by contending that while war is never a good thing, it is preferable to an attack on the U.S. by Iraq.
A student from Sierra Leone who lived through its civil war expressed that he had wished the U.S. would stop the violence in his nation and that he hopes this time around the United States will not ignore the suffering of the people and save Iraqis the brutality of Saddam Hussein.
Expecting to be challenged on their stand against war the demonstrators maintained a non-violent and unangered approach to the demonstration.
The students who organized the event researched into activism at RPI and, though they can not say definitively, they suspect that theirs is the first peace demonstration on this campus since the Vietnam War era during the 1960s and 1970s.
