“Come Hear My Opinion and Only My Opinion,” a student demonstration against the number and nature of on-campus protests, was met with resistance this week. Leaders of the protest wished to drum up support and created flyers advertising the rally. When these advertisements were posted around campus in prominent locations, another student stapled Uno reverse cards on top of them.
The idea for the protest, according to the organizer, senior Jako Lentern, came from “watching groups on campus engage in reasonable and balanced debate on issues like Tibetan and Uyghur minorities in China.” Lentern wanted to encourage the involved parties (the College Republicans, Chinese Students’ Association, and Tibet Event Group) to continue exhibiting mature and open-minded discourse.
Lentern addressed a variety of other campus protests beyond these. He included a College Feminists protest against Professor T. Florian Jaeger, a College Misogynists club protest against the College Feminists club’s protest, and a protest from Public Safety Officers against Susan B. Anthony Hall residents smoking a lot of weed and not hiding it very well. The protest-protesting protests was aimed at the involved parties, and what Lentern referred to as “an endless chain of ‘no u’ in an academic setting.”
Online discussions have raged, though no University policies have been changed. When asked why, Student Activities (SA) board member Michelle Meyers said, “We can’t actually figure out who is protesting what, or why, or what they actually want changed … They mostly seem to enjoy making signs.” SA has avoided wading into most of these conflicts because the students involved can’t seem to decide whether or not they want to file a grievance, nor who they would want to file it with.
The rise in on-campus protests has upset some less politically inclined students. One online commenter wrote, “They’re scaring away Quad Fox, which is disappointing because I care more about Quad Fox than any of these issues.”
