Students protest war in Iraq with songs, speeches

Trying to hold back bombs and bullets with a single rented amplifier, a few boxes of cookies and an undeniable amount of spirit, Penn Students Against the War in Iraq held a rally on College Green yesterday afternoon. Below-freezing temperatures made the two hours of pamphlets, speeches, poems, songs and chanting a challenging exercise in cold-weather endurance. "It's going to be hot in Baghdad when all those bombs drop," Penn anthropology and education graduate student Todd Wolfson said, explaining his willingness to stand in the snow for the cause. Peaking at around 50 people, the size of the audience was satisfactory to event organizers and participants. "I think it's a fine crowd," said German lecturer Beatrice Santorini, the event's first speaker. In her speech, Santorini expressed a desire to cut through half-truths and government ambiguity. "Because Benjamin Franklin is looking on, who I like to think of as a sort of patron saint of common sense and plain speech, I would like to call things by their real name," she said. "The vague advisories and warnings that are being issued are instances of fear-mongering," Santorini continued. "And the government of this country has been taken over by warlords, most of whom would be diagnosed as psychopaths if they had been called to another station in life." Other speakers ran the gamut from political poetry reminding listeners that "the revolution will not be televised," nor will it "help your... sex appeal" to the pragmatic words of Nubar Hovsepian, associate director of Penn's Middle East Center. "The reality is, I don't think we are going to stop the war," he said, offering instead the opinion that the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq should be kept in mind as the United States runs the risk of becoming analogous to "the British colonial administration of the 1920s." "War is detrimental to your health," he reminded his audience in conclusion. Some found hope in the demonstrators' ranks. Gloria Hayes, senior secretary at the University Medical Center's department of radiology, found the experience "well worth the... discomfort," describing the event as "reassuring and powerful." Others, however, said they found the dynamic overly scripted and less interactive than they would have liked. "It's like [watching] a scene from a play," College freshman Aaron Hann said. College junior Dillon Kuehn said he felt that, in opposing a war based "on 30 variables in two hours," the event oversimplified the issues somewhat. "I think it's good that they're out here, and they should be out here, but I'd rather speak with them than have them speak to me," he said. While early attempts at chants left a somewhat confused crowd answering an event organizer's spirited "What's war?!" with an almost questioning "Bad," experienced activists were on hand to keep the crowd energized. Annie Day, a committed activist affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade and the Not in Our Name Student Youth Network, led the assembly in rounds of chanting between speeches. "Afghanistan, Iraq, who's next on the list?/We've got to stop this, we've got to resist!" she exclaimed, with most of those within earshot following her lead. "For all of us out here, there's probably 30 people somewhere warm," one organizer said, commending the crowd for attending as the event neared its end. As shown by last month's "die-in" demonstration at Yale University, last week's anti-war resolution by Cornell University's student assembly and the upcoming student demonstrations in Philadelphia and New York on Saturday, yesterday's demonstrators at Penn are not alone.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.