Editor,
The UNM administration and regents are lucky that they rule over a campus of apathetic cowards.
It’s been nearly a decade since the Albuquerque police rioted against thousands of UNM students and community members peacefully protesting the beginning of the disastrous war in Iraq during spring break 2003.
That spring there was a student walkout and rally at the Duck Pond against the looming war. The students marched through the buildings on campus as their numbers doubled, tripled and quadrupled.
I’ll never forget the frightened looks on the faces of students who were too scared to walk out and speak up against a disastrous, costly war of choice. It might have been distracting students at large, but the protest was justifiable. It also turns out the Iraq War protesters were right.
There was no threat from Iraq, no ties to Sept. 11, no WMDs, no nuclear program, no smoking guns in the forms of mushroom clouds. Our former secular ally, Saddam Hussein, was not allies but enemies with our other former ally, the fundamentalist bin Laden.
The consensus at the time was that these protesters didn’t have a right to freedom of speech or assembly and the state violence against them was justified. After the pepper spray, 12-gauge bean bags, tear gas and intimidation, there was never another large protest against the disastrous war in Iraq at UNM.
I’m not the biggest fan of some of the tactics and rhetoric of the Occupy/(un)Occupy Movement. Yet I do believe its message about income inequality unparalleled since the Gilded Age and corporate money in politics is a good one.
I saw a photo taken last weekend of eight UNM police officers sitting on the bench in Yale Park, ironically under the Cultural Crossroads of the Americas sculpture by Bob Haozous. It is loco that these officers were being paid by the University to occupy a public park so that the public could not use it.
A few weeks ago, there was a speech sponsored by the UNM Israel Alliance featuring the controversial speaker Nonie Darwish. The video of UNM students being slapped and assaulted by elderly Zionist hoodlums went viral on the Internet.
The UNMIA, which is quite adept at managing Israel’s epic PR disasters, started posting scores of comments on the UNM Daily Lobotomy website quoting the UNM Student Code of Conduct.
At first I thought the UNM students should have used the old-school tactic of using the question-and-answer session to get their point across.
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Having found out the UNMIA audience would hysterically boo and take the microphone from anyone with an opinion they disagreed with, I can understand why these students chose to use the new-fangled mic-check to confront a racist hate speaker like Nonie Darwish.
It is not acceptable for members of the public to take the law into their own hands and emulate the thug-life tactics of the Israel Defense Forces just because a few people momentarily disrupt a controversial hate speech.
I understand Robert Burford, who is the student conduct officer from the Dean of Students, is charging these mic-checkers with violating Section 2.18 of the UNM Student Code of Conduct, which prohibits “any other acts or omissions which affect adversely University functions or University-sponsored activities, disrupt community living on campus, interfere with the rights of others to the pursuit of their education or otherwise affect adversely the processes of the University.”
I would remind the administration that, according the Code of Conduct, Section 3, students’ rights under the state and federal constitutions are specifically acknowledged and affirmed, including the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion and due process.
The provisions of this code shall be construed so as not to infringe upon these rights, as those rights are defined by law.
Originally, the First Amendment of the Constitution applied only to laws enacted by Congress. However, starting with Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court has applied the First Amendment to each state.
The UNM administration and regents are lucky they rule over a campus of apathetic cowards who drag their flip-flops while walking and texting to the drone of their iPods, because the students of this University could shut this campus down until the president, vice presidents and regents stepped down.
Brian Fejer
UNM Student
