A student sneaks a look at our banner

For forty three or more years there have been protest about military training on campus. In the late sixties and seventies it was large crowds of students leading the resistance to To Teaching War on the campus of this Catholic Jesuit University. However, over the next thirty years, after the selective service draft system ended and when our education system was more and more militarized, the number of students resisting the military campus has dwindled. It is to where there was none with us today as we stood in from the main Church on campus, Gesu, giving out ashes and asking Marquette to repent and stop “Teaching Killing*”

There were plenty of students around going to class or leaving Church with their fresh ashes on their foreheads. But for the most part we were invisible; they just marched by us, sometimes sneaking a glance at us or our sign. Today is the anniversary of the beheading of “White Rose Community” students for passing out flyers, breaking the silence of the war going on? We passed out flyers today asking Marquette to repent and stop teaching war and killing and we were ignored.

How times have changed since the sixties and seventies where student protest for civil rights or against the war were dominated by students not afraid to speak out and risk arrest. I believe today’s students are good people but have been “trained to not get involved”, “stay away from conflict.” They have been trained to be so hard of heart and desensitized to violence and killing those outrageous but true banners like “Marquette Teaches Killing”. “1.5 million dead in the Middle East” and “20, 000 plus American soldiers dead” since 9/11 (15, 000 plus from suicides) does not phase them or at least bother them.

When a few persons raised an objection or praised our presence I was grateful for the response. However, the haunting image of students just walking by stays with me. I was glad to hear tonight from a former Marquette student who used to stand with us in resistance. Where have all the students gone?

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