By Sarah Pfander
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Monday, March 26, 2007, The OG, news

[Note: This article has been updated with a new comment from organizer Shara Esbenshade.]

THE UNI HIGH Activism Club will sponsor a panel discussion and open forum at 7 p.m. Tuesday on the role that protests play in our world today.

The event, organized by juniors Shara Esbenshade and Carl Zielinski, will take place in Room 109 at Uni High. The panel will consist of English teachers Elizabeth Majerus and Matt Mitchell and history teachers Bill Sutton and Chris Butler.

The panelists will speak for about the first 30 minutes, followed by an open forum featuring questions and comments from the audience. The whole event is free and open to the public.

The panel and forum were scheduled in response to discussions that took place earlier this year in The Online Gargoyle, in which students argued over the effectiveness and worth of protests.

“This forum will not be about trying to convince people about the power of protest,” Esbenshade said. “I hope that we can talk about the very legitimate arguments
about why protest is not working. I hope to rethink how we define a successful protest, but I want it to be known that this forum is a place FOR the criticisms of protest to be heard, and I hope that those with the criticisms voiced earlier this year will come. Those should be discussed in a friendly environment.”

More specifically, the panel will address four main issues regarding popular protests:

• Majerus will discuss alternative ways to get involved in a cause and to protest, besides marching and rallying.

• Mitchell will discuss the various purposes that protests can serve and what they can accomplish.

• Sutton will talk about the role that protests have played in American history, focusing on the Vietnam War.

• Butler will discuss why, or why not, protests have been successful with regard to the Iraq War.

“I can see both sides of the issue,” said Mitchell. “When I was a college freshman, and the first Gulf War started, there were massive protests on the Rutgers campus, and my roommate was very active in the antiwar movement. At the time, although I opposed the war in every respect, I saw nothing worthwhile in the protests — my view of politics was pretty cynical, and I thought that the men in charge wouldn't care what a bunch of scruffy college students thought of their policy.

“Between the Gulf wars, my views changed, and on the day of [George W. Bush's] invasion I was in the crowd stopping traffic on Green Street. My views have altered significantly since 1991, and it now is clear to me that popular protest is absolutely crucial to a participatory democracy and in fact is indispensable to every major social movement of the last century.

“In addition to trying to influence leadership's decisions,” Mitchell continued, “it also was valuable for me to see, on March 22, 2003, how many other people in my community weren't buying the propaganda. Watching the TV news can be pretty lonely when there's a war starting, and it just felt good to get with a big crowd and make some noise in the street. It's very empowering, and can easily lead to other forms of agitation.”

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