I walked out of the College of Arts and Sciences today and almost tripped over a bearded student lying down on the steps. Then I noticed there were several students doing the same. Immediately my, BS detector went up, and I was soon proven right when I saw a student holding a sign proclaiming that the students splayed out in front of the Tsai Center steps were staging a “Die-In.”
These students were lounging on the steps all day to protest our conflict with Iraq, to symbolize the citizens of Iraq who have died since the Gulf War in 1991. An interesting cause, I thought, until I saw another sign denouncing United States action against Iraq. I almost flipped my lid right there. These people were apparently blaming our government for these deaths.
Are these people out of their mind? I guess the whole “Iraq is led by a crazed, paranoid, power hungry madman” thing couldn’t be the reason. A leader who butchered and executed his own people before the United States ever got involved? Nah, couldn’t be. We should just blame it on the United States government because that is what fashionable college protesters seem to do.
Is it true that United States and British planes have been bombing Iraq since the Persian War? Of course. And while that fact is often paraded by anti-war protesters, they often neglect to mention those bombs keep Saddam Hussein from butchering the Kurdish people in the North of his country and from encroaching on Kuwait in the South.
Regardless of how I feel about their cause, the “Die-In” on the CAS steps was a scene of pure bathos. I really would have loved to be sitting around that bong when someone suggested that one. “Let’s lay down on the steps and be like dead people, dude.”
The idea of students at an affluent private college symbolizing people victimized and slaughtered by an evil regime just seems absurd, doesn’t it? I appreciate that people are interested in something other than their immediate reality, but there are better ways. If you profess to care so much (which most BU protesters don’t because next week, they’ll be boycotting Kathy Lee clothing or freeing Tibet), write Congress, go to Washington, D.C., hold meaningful lectures and discussions. Don’t nap on the steps of the Tsai Center and block college students from getting in and out of class.
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