Posted on 03/09/2007 10:07:35 AM PST by wrhssaxensemble
Tempers flare at ROTC Rally Groups nearly come to blows outside Student Union By: Wes Rahn, Collegian Staff Issue date: 3/9/07 Section: News
Approximately 30 students shouted anti-war sentiments at speakers at the Student Union yesterday to protest a student rally, held by the Republican Club. Media Credit: Cristian Gomez/Collegian Approximately 30 students shouted anti-war sentiments at speakers at the Student Union yesterday to protest a student rally, held by the Republican Club.
An organized, on-campus rally in support of ROTC erupted in conflict yesterday as members of the audience shouted their anti-military sentiments at the three featured speakers.
The rally, which began at 12:20 p.m. on the steps of the Student Union, was organized by the University of Massachusetts Republican Club. After the event started, it took ten minutes for protestors to begin heckling the speakers.
According to Rob Shepherd, the rally was held to draw attention to a recent incident in which a list of prospective recruits was taken off a ROTC table by members of the Radical Student Union. The speakers at the rally called for the expulsion of those involved in the theft under a violation of the Student Code of Conduct.
Ed Cutting who spoke in support of the recruiters called the act of stealing the list of names, "an act of treason." One of the anti war protestors in the crowd shouted back, "then I'm proud to be a traitor!"
According to those in attendance there were approximately fifty people gathered in the audience. Rob Shepherd, the treasurer of the Republican Club, estimated that approximately thirty of them were there in protest. He believes as well that those involved in taking the list were there.
"We were there giving our speeches and kids started coming up and screaming at us," he said. "They were shouting various anti-war rhetoric such as 'Get the ROTC off campus' and 'Osama wasn't in Iraq.'"
According to Shepherd, the Republican Club has a policy to ignore verbal assault and other aggressions, both things they run into quite often.
"Generally speaking, this kind of stuff happens all the time," said Shepherd, "we don't want to start a fight; we just want to get our voice out there." He cited another event organized by the Republican Club when a speaker was invited from the University of North Carolina to talk about free speech. Shepherd claims members of the Radical Student Union also interrupted that speaker with chants of protest.
"Pretty much any event we have, we have to worry about people who come to protest," he said. "They get hostile or angry, call us bigots and other things that are just aren't accurate."
Shepherd says that people can protest anyway they want, but taking the list of names went beyond the line, and shouldn't be tolerated. "Regardless of their views of the war or the Bush policy the ROTC is separate from that," he said. "The University needs the ROTC to exist and they have a right to try and get people to join and these hoodlums violated the student code by taking that list."
The Republican Club supports the ROTC on grounds claiming that when the University was founded under the Morrill Land Grant, the ROTC was a requirement for the University to exist.
Members of the Radical Student Union failed to return phone calls and e-mails by press time.
If America is to be left in the hands of the alleged "intelligensia," then we as a nation are doomed.
Keep doing what you're doing, and don't let the bastards get you down.
It's just possible that you may reach one or two......it's also possible that, at some point, these immature idiots will actually grow up!
Militant
Radical Left. Is there an echo in here?
Thank you for your service to our country.
Typical wussy liberals!
"Members of the Radical Student Union failed to return phone calls and e-mails by press time."
Probably down at the laundry picking up their brown shirts.
Ahhhh, the party of the "big tent" and the party who DEMANDS that the rest of us have "tolerance" of those we disagree with.
Brings back memories.
When I was in college, I was part of one of the conservative campus groups. The campus Right and Left is always at war. Campus conservatives tend to be libertarian types; campus liberals all wish they were alive during the '60s and all think the socialist revolution is 'nigh. Most grow up in the long run. Some on the Left stick around campus and become permanent fixtures, still screaming at the top of their lungs at age 30. It's all very amusing in retrospect.
No comment from the administration?
"then I'm proud to be a traitor."
I wonder if that's going to be such a ballsy thing to say if we ever start actually trying people for treason again and enforcing the Constitutionally mandated punishment for such behavior.
These do nothings, know nothings only make such statements for two reasons.
1. Because any speech and action is "free speech" without the enforcement of treason and sedition laws.
2. Because countless millions of citizens before him/her/it were ROTC or armed forces members and he isn't speaking German or Russian.
I swear if I were in college these days as opposed to 15 years ago I'd be more hated than Bush. I would have a field day pressing an incredible amount of lawsuits on these clowns for harassment, assault, defamation etc.
My brother went to Brown in the 80's, I thought they were insane when Reagan was President. I think now they're just enemies of the state.
The day is coming when these people live a self-professed prophecy of being rounded up and their behavior judged as criminal and anti-American.
As a twice graduate of UMass (68, 75G), this news sickens and angers me. I have watched with dismay as UMass went from one of the top schools in the country (it retired undefeated on The College Bowl in 1963, one of only ten schools to ever do so) to a place today where the violent and the stupid can disrupt and threaten anything and anyone on campus with which they disagree. I doubt if many in the administration know or would care to learn that the departments of humanities and social sciences at UMass are now viewed in large part by the outside world as dumping grounds for those who major in "Victims Studies" or in other ways show they cannot or will not achieve at the college level. The true losers are, of course, the people who pay $70,000 for four years at UMass, during which time they can expect to be assaulted and insulted by faculty and student alike whenever the former become displeased with another's opinions.
In 1970, while I was undergoing Navy flight training on my way to Vietnam, the UMass ROTC building was burned by violent bums pretending to be students. How ironic that many of these are now tenured faculty, leading today's students on a torchlight parade to burn free speech and free assembly, for both of which other UMass graduates have fought and died in battle.
No speaker should ever have to be shouted down. I was at a MinuteMan Project rally in Phoenix last year and there was a large group of illegals and their apologists gathered nearby, trying to shout down the speakers. I think it was Chris Simcox who said "Hey guys, yell all you want. We have a really good PA system here, and it's only turned up to 2."
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Geez, back in my day, ROTC cadets were "extreme sports" types who just loved to mess with Moonbats.
What I would do in their place today would be to go undercover, wearing a black trench coat and carrying an umbrella, with a silly hat and a big fake mustache. Then go up behind the Moonbats and gently poke several of them on the back of their leg with the tip of the umbrella.
Then, when someone finally complained, refuse to say anything, and quickly walk away.
It would take their pea brains a while to figure out what they thought had happened. One of them, more paranoid than the others, would think that he had been stabbed with a "poisoned umbrella", and he would tell the rest, who would proceed to get hysterical.
This would only work about one out of five times, but if it did, it would be a doozy.
Other tricks would be to dribble a drop or two of "Coyote scent" animal attractor (used by hunters), on the backs of their trousers. It smells like a dozen cesspools.
Itching power is mean. But hey, Moonbats deserve the very best.
In days gone by, a dozen leather necks back to back would pounce on these liberal poofters and give them the spankings their parents failed to administer.
That would not shut them up, BUT they would not dare to come to interfere with any other meetings you might have.
Today we are far too polite, to a fault.
Then get a photo off the internet of Nazi students burning books in the early 30's. Be sure it's a photo with swastika armbands, so it's instantly identifiable.
Then make a large 5 ft by 3 ft poster. At the very top, all the way across, have it say something like,
"STUDENTS PROTECTING FELLOW STUDENTS FROM DANGEROUS SPEECH"
Second line is just "1933" over the left half, and "2007" over the right half.
Then of course the 2 photos (or photo montage).
If room left at the bottom, maybe "THE TRADITION CONTINUES!"
And, since the expected lifetime of this poster on a Massachusetts campus is apparently around 5 minutes, make sure you have a designated photographer to get photos of them tearing it down. You can post those all over the internet, and of course include a photo or two in your NEXT big poster for your next rally!
PS: Very easy to make large posters nowadays, with most Windows apps & printer drivers allowing "tiled printouts" of large posters onto multiple sheets of regular sized paper. Trim all the sheets w/ paper cutter, tape together carefully, mount on any large piece of cardboard from discarded boxes found behind stores. Buy a 1-inch by 2-inch by 8-foot "furring strip" if you want the sign high up in the air --- use coat hanger wire to fashion 2 mounting points between the wood pole and cardboard. I've done this bookoo times now!
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