Posted on 03/09/2003 7:21:00 PM PST by Ragtime Cowgirl
Best of the Web Today - March 6, 2003
By JAMES TARANTO
Ditching for Saddam
"High school and college students across the country walked out of class Wednesday to protest a war with Iraq, holding a series of rallies organizers predicted would be the biggest campus demonstrations since the Vietnam War," the Associated Press reports. We compared reports of the number of protesting students to the enrollment figures in the Information Please Almanac and came up with this table:
College
|
Enrollment
|
# of Protesters
|
% of students
not protesting |
Stanford University |
7,886
|
300
|
96.20%
|
University of Maryland |
24,638
|
500
|
97.97%
|
Marquette University |
7,496
|
40
|
99.47%
|
Penn State University |
34,406
|
1,500
|
95.64%
|
Miami University (Ohio) |
14,914
|
125
|
99.16%
|
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) |
15,608
|
100
|
99.36%
|
Virginia Commonwealth University |
16,505
|
2
|
99.99%
|
Rice University |
2,856
|
200
|
93.00%
|
New York University |
18,628
|
100
|
99.46%
|
University of California (Berkeley) |
22,593
|
300
|
98.67%
|
Rutgers University |
27,939
|
80
|
99.71%
|
(Sources: Information Please Almanac, AP, CNN, Daily Californian, Daily Targum) |
The New York Times reports that an Arkansas-based protest organizer, Andy Burns of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, "received a panicked call from five middle school students in Los Angeles who were the only ones who had left their classrooms and were now hiding from administrators in a school restroom. (His advice to them: call the American Civil Liberties Union.)"
The overwhelming number of students staying away from these protests makes clear that the vast majority of America's young people favor the liberation of Iraq. So if you're a pro-war collegian, what can you do to make your views known? Drink beer, says Joshua Claybourn of the Hoosier Review. This Friday and Saturday night, Claybourn reports, supporters of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition "will go to bars and watering holes in solidarity with students across the country, to show our support for the war on Iraq. All students drinking and having fun at bars on March 7th and 8th will of course be celebrating their freedom to take part in such an act--freedoms not afforded to the youth of Iraq."
Our own college days are long past, but you may rest assured we will be raising a glass in solidarity tomorrow night.
Using the media's logic, the last pro-war, pro-Bush rally we had in downtown Houston shut the city down as people poured into the streets to give support.
There were three of us.
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