Day 33
So on thursday I got off class at 3:30 for a half hour break, and decided to make my way to the annual career fair, not knowing what kind of a career I'm interested in quite yet.
The geniuses at the career fair decided to close down at 3:30 though, the exact time that literally thousands of students finish for the day. Total bust.
But today, I was reading the paper and noticed some letters to the editor about war protestors who set up a cute little kiosk literally directly in front of the military recruit kiosk. What was this kiosk composed of, you say? Well, as shown in the newspaper picture, it was a large coffin draped with a canadian flag, and on top were sitting dozens of various pamphlets full of anti-war blather. The two protestors manning it were quite disheveled, but very serious looking, while the two reruiters at the deak directly behind them were very friendly looking, clean cut, and stood with what I can only describe as exemplary posture.
A few months back UVic held their student body Annual General Meeting; about 500 people attended, including myself. The student council had previously voted to ban the military recruiters from the career fair, but there was much outrage, and the ban got put to general vote at the AGM. Give or take, about 50 people raised hands in support of the ban, while the remaining 450-ish hands went up against it. So, the ban was officially recinded to the sound of a rousing cheer.
Free speech is a terribly difficult concept for me to understand. I find that opposite extremes are easy to catch on to (ie. You may express political dissent, but you may not scream fire in a crowded theatre for fun, etc.), but there are all kinds of tricky middle-cases that do not clearly fall anywhere. Allowing protestors to do their schtick at the career fair is all fine and good, but I question the level of obtrusiveness they were afforded by the student council. Without being too sure, I may ascribe to the argument that the protestors were clearly overstepping their bounds, in that their efforts to block and dissuade students from visiting the recruitment desk (no actual recruiting is done, just pamphlet handouts and question-answering etc.) contravened the spirit of the overwhelming vote in favour of allowing the recruiters to be present at the fair.
But, even if that argument fails, which it easily could, I would strongly suggest that such tasteless shock-value methods of information dissemination not only lower the level of discourse for everybody, but also don't do the cause any good. When I see PETA protestors wrapping themselves up naked to look like packaged meat products, or distributing pamphlets comparing slaughterhouses to Nazi concentration camps, I just feel a sense of disappointment; I really do understand their philosophical underpinnings, and I genuinely agree with most of what they believe about animal sentience, suffering, and even possibly animal rights in the potentially codified sense, but the methodology of persuasion, akin to that of these anti-war protestors, only serves to give an impression of radicalism and fringe thought, and thus uncredibility in the minds of everyday people.
The geniuses at the career fair decided to close down at 3:30 though, the exact time that literally thousands of students finish for the day. Total bust.
But today, I was reading the paper and noticed some letters to the editor about war protestors who set up a cute little kiosk literally directly in front of the military recruit kiosk. What was this kiosk composed of, you say? Well, as shown in the newspaper picture, it was a large coffin draped with a canadian flag, and on top were sitting dozens of various pamphlets full of anti-war blather. The two protestors manning it were quite disheveled, but very serious looking, while the two reruiters at the deak directly behind them were very friendly looking, clean cut, and stood with what I can only describe as exemplary posture.
A few months back UVic held their student body Annual General Meeting; about 500 people attended, including myself. The student council had previously voted to ban the military recruiters from the career fair, but there was much outrage, and the ban got put to general vote at the AGM. Give or take, about 50 people raised hands in support of the ban, while the remaining 450-ish hands went up against it. So, the ban was officially recinded to the sound of a rousing cheer.
Free speech is a terribly difficult concept for me to understand. I find that opposite extremes are easy to catch on to (ie. You may express political dissent, but you may not scream fire in a crowded theatre for fun, etc.), but there are all kinds of tricky middle-cases that do not clearly fall anywhere. Allowing protestors to do their schtick at the career fair is all fine and good, but I question the level of obtrusiveness they were afforded by the student council. Without being too sure, I may ascribe to the argument that the protestors were clearly overstepping their bounds, in that their efforts to block and dissuade students from visiting the recruitment desk (no actual recruiting is done, just pamphlet handouts and question-answering etc.) contravened the spirit of the overwhelming vote in favour of allowing the recruiters to be present at the fair.
But, even if that argument fails, which it easily could, I would strongly suggest that such tasteless shock-value methods of information dissemination not only lower the level of discourse for everybody, but also don't do the cause any good. When I see PETA protestors wrapping themselves up naked to look like packaged meat products, or distributing pamphlets comparing slaughterhouses to Nazi concentration camps, I just feel a sense of disappointment; I really do understand their philosophical underpinnings, and I genuinely agree with most of what they believe about animal sentience, suffering, and even possibly animal rights in the potentially codified sense, but the methodology of persuasion, akin to that of these anti-war protestors, only serves to give an impression of radicalism and fringe thought, and thus uncredibility in the minds of everyday people.
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