Let me start off by saying that I agree with many of the issues that Tuesday’s protest brought up. I think that the inadequacy of the financial aid program is a gigantic problem, like any Wesleyan student I would like to see Woodframe housing kept intact, and I think that there is a need for administrative disclosure in many circumstances. However, the manner in which this protest was conducted was a disgrace and, in many ways trumped the grievances with the issues at hand.
The fact that protestors interrupted classes by physically coming into the classrooms and chanting seems to me to be in direct conflict with the issues that were being protested against. Don’t get me wrong, I am the first person thanking God when a class is unexpectedly cancelled, but one must acknowledge that education is the central goal of both the students and the administration. That being said, interrupting classes is a totally inappropriate way of bringing these issues to the forefront. In the words of one professor (who I think we can all agree should give me an A in his class for quoting him), “Do whatever you want on your own time, but do not intrude on mine.”
Also, the idea of this protest is seems fatally flawed to me because no one has provided any reasonable solutions to the issues at hand. It might be that these solutions are out there and they may have even played a key role in the creation of this protest, but somewhere between storming Bennet’s office and raiding classrooms the solutions were lost and the protest became, more or less, an angry mob that was not working toward any particular resolution.
It seems to me that the protestors should have realized that these issues need to be looked at objectively if they are truly serious about reaching a solution. I am not trying to negate the importance and impact that protests can have, but there is a proper way to conduct oneself when faced with adversity that was ignored in this case. While you may have succeeded in airing these issues, you should ask yourself if this is the way you want your voice to be heard – as a disrupting force, instead of a uniting force (sorry about the Bush allusion.) It did not have to go down this way; the students could have worked with the administration to create solutions to these issues.
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