What they said at the protest.

The Capital Times reports on the protest I wrote about and photographed here. The protest was centered on ousting military recruiters from campus. The article quotes UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley saying there's "no way" these students will succeed and that students who want to talk to the recruiters deserve access to them. I see the noise I complained about in my post got a police response:

"Apparently we've got complaints from around campus that we're being too loud," said junior Ben Ratliffe, after a police officer had a word with organizers. "I would say we've got complaints of our own."

An ad lib response to criticism that flips the words for rhetorical effect. I wonder if Ratliffe noticed the similarity to the famous Bush World Trade Center quote.

Here's Ratliffe's message:

Ratliffe said the protest was aimed at getting military recruiters and the ROTC program "out of our schools." He said the war on terror is a "euphemism for military expansion."

The money being used for the war in Iraq should be used here at home to promote jobs and health care, he said.

And then there were the "more strident" members of the crowd:

Sophomore [name deleted] said she supports the resistance in Iraq and said it will continue as long as the U.S. military is there.

Why did I delete the name? I can't bear to slur one of my University's students with her own vile remark.

UPDATE: Here's the Badger Herald story on the protest, which notes that "more than 100 students" participated in the walk-out. To calculate the percentage of students who participated, here is the number of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: 41,588.

And check out the comments to this post. There's an excellent debate about why I deleted the student's name and a surprising lack of hostility toward the student despite the utter stupidity of her remark. I guess people have seen enough Che T-shirts on clueless young people not to be too bothered by the foolish romanticization of rebellion.