Student protestors created a mock checkpoint in front of the Campus Center during lunchtime yesterday, temporarily blocking people from entering in order to denounce the checkpoints used at the Israeli borders.
Members of Students for Free Palestine (SFP) stood in front of the entrances to the Campus Center and asked to see students’ IDs, causing brief delays.
The protestors stood in the way of other students and a prospective student and his family, not allowing them to pass for a few seconds.
“The point of it was to bring awareness of the situation that Palestinians go through everyday,” said SFP member Mike Butterfield ’06. “Some people who understood the issue played along, some people got really upset and some people were really subdued. The whole purpose was to bring home the fact that the Palestinians have to deal with this everyday.”
Some students said they appreciated the way in which the protest forced them to consider the issue of Israeli checkpoints, while others explained that they found the event annoying.
“I think it’s a good way to throw it in people’s faces about what is going on,” said Rachel Wertheimer ’06. “At the same time that it annoyed me, it forces you to try to understand the situation.”
Wertheimer said that she was glad to see that they were also handing out literature at the protest.
Other students found the event irritating.
Chris Lake ’05 was frustrated by the protesters’ attempt to prevent him from entering the Campus Center, though he recognized that his type of response was just what the demonstrators were hoping to provoke.
“They’re free to make a point and it’s not fun, but that’s the point of what they are doing,” he said.
Other students expressed similar opinions.
“I’m very sympathetic to what they were saying, but I was having a personal problem that day and I wanted to punch them,” said Amy Ma ’05.
Niv Elis ’05 said that he thought that the protest took the situation out of context, thus inaccurately representing the purpose and effects of Israeli checkpoints.
“In my opinion, it didn’t make sense,” he said. “Security checkpoints in front of the Campus Center are an ineffective analogy for defense checkpoints in Israel.”
Moreover, Elis felt that the demonstration ignored and trivialized the reason that the Israeli government erected the checkpoints. Elis mentioned that according to literature published by the Israeli Defense Forces, three to four potential severe terrorist attacks are prevented each week due to preventive actions that include checkpoints.
According to Butterfield, the action was justified and a good way to get SFP’s point across.
“We’re not really concerned with alienating people,” he said.
Leave a Reply