Karl Rove Draws Applause, Protest
By The Forum • September 15th, 2008
Karl Rove has left the building. Despite protesters’ best efforts, as seen in the photos and video below , Rove was able to leave through a side exit of Seaman Hall through the Athenaeum’s rooftop bridge.
[Photo and video credit: Alex Bargmann '11]
The protesters, overwhelmingly non-CMCers, sat outside the Athenaeum for nearly five hours– from before 5 PM to at least 9:30 PM– blocking off exits, beating drums, and chanting during Rove’s speech.
(Edited September 17. The Forum apologizes for anonymously making generalizations about the protesters. In the future it will at least attribute a writer’s name when it gently mocks Pitzer students)
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September 15th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Like let blatant crimes against humanity go unpunished and unanswered?
Please, tell me what’s better than looking out for the simple worth and dignity, not to mention life, of another human being?
Or how about manipulating the political process to take advantage of millions of Americans in order to make a profit in stock from companies like Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer? Or is political corruption so common place that its not worth spending time on either?
How about turning us from the most beloved nation on the planet for three weeks following September 11th, 2001 (after the attack, the headline in Paris read: “We are all Americans now” Islamic and people of every denomination and creed from around the world offered their sympathies and prayed with us) instead into the most hated and despised, causing the economic “recession” we’re in now, and the creation of more terrorist factions vowing revenge, the war machine turning violence into the inevitable propagation of more violence? A process that somehow still gets ignored even after being proved for millenia. Worth it as long as there’s a profit to be made.
You’re right. School work is way more important than principles. Or hope for something better.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Thank you Ben. . . well put. I feel my time was more than appropriately spent.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Karl Rove may not be a war criminal, but his professional career has harmed us all.
If anyone deserved such treatment, it was him.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Haha, the Pitzer callout was a low blow, but kind of what we were all thinking.
Really though, tonight was probably the highlight of most of the protester’s protesting careers. When else will they get a chance to dance around beating drums and chanting in unison? This kind of opportunity is pretty rare on campus.
I should have pregamed =(
September 15th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I believe it is one of the primary jobs of students to find the truth and speak it loud to power. We must define ourselves as students and citizens who challenge injustice, and our institutions in the Claremont Colleges as ones that will not accept someone like Karl Rove in silence.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
As a Pitzer student, I would like to point out that freedom of speech is an important right, but I do NOT feel like the mid-speech drum banging/out of control yelling is at all appropriate or symbollic of Pitzer’s community. I went to listen to what Rove had to say and was appauled to see a few of my fellow students acting so disrespectfully towards those who had come to actually listen to his speech.
Please do not judge an entire college based on a few individuals that express their views in radical ways.
Power to the protestors, but, on behalf of myself and others who I’ve spoken to, I am embarassed about what happened during his speech.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Ben,
The Pitzer Community misses you dearly. Come back to visit soon!
September 16th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Whichever poor, under-informed lame-brains feels that Pitzer students have too much time on their hands, consider our outstanding Fulbright award record, our unique commitment to hands-on environmental sustainability, and our impressive community service achievements. Our protest of Karl Rove, a man responsible for dogmatically swinging the right to dominance in American politics, has nothing to do with laziness or with a poor work ethic. We simply choose to prioritize our time differently. And this, a possible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use our democratic right to verbalize dissent to criminality and disrespect for human rights, was a perfect justification for sacrificing some of our many other time commitments.
Shame on whichever CMC students seek to use our demonstration as evidence of Pitzer students lack of commitment or lack of responsibility. In fact, I’d say we’re a but more socially responsible than any of you: in the absence of maids, we actually clean our own toilets!
In passionate opposition to Karl Rove and the GOP, and in severe aggravation toward baseless inter-5C stereotype perpetuation,
Sol.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Not all CMCers believe Karl Rove’s visit to the Athenaeum honored the institution. He is avoiding a Congressional subpoena, after all. What sort of signal does that send?
I was heartened to read that CMC students were part of the protest crowd.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:51 am
As a Pitzer student, I too am thoroughly offended by your snide remarks posted about a collective “us.” The protest yesterday was not to create a divide between the colleges, it was an attempt to unify voices in a common rage.
There were students from all five C’s with signs in their hands protesting.
However, since it has been stated the the protestors were “mostly Pitzer students,” I was curious if you could post the numbers explicitly stating the demographics of the protestors. This is not sarcasm either, if you have them I’d actually be very interested in reading them. If you don’t have them, on the other hand, I think that your assumption was brash, no matter how true it may be.
As far as asking if we have anything else to do, to you I say this:
For every student protesting last night, how many were in there room studying? For every student protesting last night, how many CMC students were partying the night before (oh yes, aren’t stereotypes fun)? Are you going to tell me that because Pitzer students decided to listen to Karl Rove speak, they are going to be lumped into the pack of passionate dissenters outside?
I know for a fact that when Karl Rove stepped out to speak, I, as a proud Pitzer student, applauded while the CMC girls in front of me sneered.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:07 am
As a CMC student, especially one who’s photos are in this article, I do not appreciate the remark made by the forum at the end of this article.. It’d be one thing if the author put a face to the words, identifying the thought as his opinion. However, that’s not the case here. Instead we have a generalization made anonymously.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Anonymous or not, a generalization still holds the same value: its a worthless attack on certian group. You should be just as ashamed of yourself as you are of the anonymous generalization attacks made on CMC’ers in the responses to this blog.
September 16th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Don’t the police have anything better to do than pepper spray students practicing their first amendment right peacefully?
September 16th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
OK this comments war was fun to watch, but it’s kind of ridiculous now. We have now edited the most offensive part of the post.
We would like to apologize for the “I wish I had time… don’t Pitzer students have anything else to do?” remark. At the very least, we should have written “protesters” instead of “Pitzer students.”
The issue was that the majority of protesters (especially the leaders and the guy with the loudspeaker) were from Pitzer, so we clumped together the rest of the protesters as part of the same “them,” which is always a dangerous thing to do.
Anyway, the comment wasn’t meant to be offensive– it was meant in jest, like a Mudder would say, “How can CMCers play beirut every weeknight? Don’t they have astrophysics HW to do?!?”
September 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Let me clarify:
Protestors were only blocking the exits after Karl Rove was done with his speech and the students who attended the talk were for the most part gone.
In your article, you made the mistake of portraying the demonstrators as trying to prevent people from entering or leaving the lecture. This could not be father from the truth, as the demonstrators made it clear that they had no opposition to Karl Rove’s right to speak but rather that he be held accountable for his actions.
Also, there were many people from the community who participated in the protest as well as students and professors from the 5-C community. Please refrain from targeting any specific college in your generalizations. You are insulting your colleagues by assuming that none of them are also supporters of the same cause.
It is an insult to the students of the other Claremont Colleges for you to make that ignorant assumption.
GET IT RIGHT.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Ohhhh you people are such whiners. WhineWhineWhineWhineWhine.
I personally enjoyed watching the whole spectacle. Thank you protesters for a fantastic show!
CMC may have taught me that small protests are generally not a useful form of holding your government accountable, but they sure are fun to watch. Can I get that drum beat chant on iTunes????
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