End the war, says Columbia students in walkout day

By Hayley Carlton

Some students from Columbia College Chicago in the South Loop skipped classes recently to protest the war in Iraq. The protest was part of nationwide student walk-out day in which key players were students at CCC as well as the University of California at Berkley, the University of North Carolina, and Columbia University in New York. Students at other institutions also participated.

“This isn’t a political issue; this is a moral issue,” said Samantha Hamlin, a junior at Columbia College. A member of The World Can’t Wait, an anti-George W. Bush group that organized the student protests, Hamlin was the walk-out’s main organizer.

Students gathered in the lobby of the school’s Wabash campus, where they held signs and handed out literature from 8 a.m. until after 4 p.m. They also placed anti-war signs in the windows, and some students held placards.

“There was a room full of students,” said Kristi Clemm of The World Can’t Wait. Clemm said the most active time of the strike came at noon, with up to 300 students packing the lobby. Later in the afternoon, the strikers had dwindled to a small group amid the school’s daily hustle and bustle, although “even students who attended class took literature,” said Clemm.

Freshman Tom McKee showed up at 8 a.m. and remained until late afternoon. “We had a lot of people," he said. "We opened a lot of minds.”

Hamlin called the student strike “a first step, a turning point. There’s a lot of anti-war sentiment, a lot of anti-Bush sentiment, but what we’re trying to do is transform that sentiment into action. Because without action, without a massive movement of resistance, we’re not going to stop the war.”

Columbia students became active in The World Can’t Wait after one of the group’s board members, an Iraqi war veteran, spoke at the school. “Students really got involved because four years ago today was the world’s largest anti-war strike,” said Clemm.

“We’ve been organizating things all year," said Sergey Turzhanskiy, a Columbia student also involved with The World Can’t Wait. “There’s a lot of students that are interested. There's a lot of students who feel that there’s really nothing that people can do, which is pretty sad, I think.”

“If the war ended tomorrow because of what we’re doing that’s great,” said Sy Bar-Shashat, a junior. “That’s not why we’re here. What we’re really trying to do is to take power into our own hands. Maybe this will be a catalyst; maybe people will start striking from their jobs.”

Not all Columbia students skipped class. “Kids should go to class because ignorance is George W. Bush’s best weapon,” said Ben Pardo, a Columbia junior. Pardo supports the idea behind the strike but does not think skipping class is the way to get the message across. He said soldiers fighting in Iraq often join the military because they have no other way to fund college costs.

“We're trivializing the fact that they’re risking their lives to pay for their education and we’re not even taking ours, ” Pardo explained. His classes “were full for the most part,” he added.

The college did not sanction the strike. Warrick L. Carter, Columbia’s president, released a statement saying classes would not be canceled because “students who pay tuition expect to have classes conducted without interruption.”

McKee disagreed. “I understand, they paid money; I paid money," he said. "You can miss one day to have your voice heard. It won’t kill you to miss one day."

According to Hamlin, at least three Columbia College professors canceled classes because of the strike. “We went through the various buildings and knocked on doors and made announcements and called on people to join us," Hamlin noted. "Two classes just voted unanimously to come here.”