Elmer's Brother

I bet half these protesters are going to school on government loans. I say we stop funding cutting our own throats. Anyone with me? I noticed the school officials were not concerned with the safety of the recruiters.

Hey Hey Ho Ho, Federal Funding's Got to Go
"Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables," the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted "Don't come back. Don't come back" as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

"The situation had degraded to the point where there was a possibility of injury to either a student or law enforcement officer. We certainly didn't want that to happen,'' said Capt. Will Griffin, one of the Army recruiters. . . .

Universities that receive federal funds are required to allow military recruiters on campus. But campus officials had worried that Tuesday's protest would get out of hand as it had last April, when Students Against War protesters surrounded the table where military personnel sat, and hundreds of other demonstrators engaged in an angry protest outside. Some of the recruiters reported that their tires had been slashed and one employee at the career center was injured.

David Kliger, campus provost and executive vice chancellor, said the school was most concerned Tuesday about safety issues, but also wanted to preserve access to the recruiters for students who wanted to speak with them, while still allowing protesting students their right to free speech.

The Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation is calling on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to invoke the Solomon Amendment and deny federal funding to UC Santa Cruz, which received $80 million of our money from Washington last year.

This sounds reasonable to us. Of course the Students Against War have a perfect right to speak their minds, but that right is not a license to engage in violence and intimidation. The threat of a loss of federal money could be a good spur to university officials to quit tolerating this sort of behavior.