Friday, September 21, 2001

On Campuses Across U.S., Students Hold Rallies for Peace, Drawing Mixed Responses By DANA MULHAUSER Students at more than 140 colleges rallied for peace on Thursday, urging the United States to combat terrorism without killing civilians. Under a damper of rain, 15 Georgetown University students staged a silent vigil in a busy campus plaza. Covering their faces with bandannas and paper bags, some lay on the ground, representing the civilians killed in U.S. military operations from Hiroshima to Kosovo. Other students, standing up, depicted participants in the current conflict. One held a sign that said "I am in the U.S. Navy. My wife is five months pregnant. Please don't send me off to die before my baby is born. Thank you." Its bearer, Anthony House, a junior, laughed when asked if he was actually a midshipman. "I'm a pacifist," he said. Mr. House was there to "raise awareness for options other than violent retaliation." A practicing Roman Catholic, he said that his religion will not allow him to support violence under any circumstances. The vigil may have been silent, but people who stopped to watch were not. "The United States has to realize that what it's doing with its foreign policy is just as bad, at least, as what happened last week," said Carmen Candia, a senior at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. No students passing through the highly trafficked plaza showed hostility toward the demonstrators. The one police officer who was present idled under a nearby tree, trying to keep out of the rain. Many of the observers were among the 2,000 international students who study at Georgetown. "I'm so impressed," Zeinav Abulmash said in halting English. Ms. Abulmash, an Egyptian Muslim, is a master's-degree student at Georgetown's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. "I feel that these people are doing so much to show what they believe. They are good people." "I feel safe here [at Georgetown]," she said. "I am from Egypt, but people understand that I am not a terrorist." Ms. Abulmash, who wears a head covering, feels more comfortable at Georgetown than she does outside the campus gates, and she has tried to avoid going out in public and traveling in the past 10 days. At other colleges around the country, Thursday's rallies took the forms of speeches, town meetings, and letter-writing campaigns to Congress. Activities were centered in California and at private colleges in the Northeast. At the University of California at Berkeley, a rally drew 500 protesters and 20 counterprotesters, who advocated for the use of military force. Events in the South and Midwest drew smaller crowds. A letter-writing campaign at Baylor University drew a "hesitant" group of 20 students, according to Sasha Ross, a master's-degree student. "These protesters are in a very, very small minority," said Eric Hoplin, executive director of the College Republican National Committee, in Washington. "Most college students understand that military interventions are not revenge. They are about protecting ourselves." Speakers at Amherst College told the crowd of 150 people that they wanted pacifism, not passivity. "We're searching for justice, and we want action," said Michelle Oliveros-Larsen, an Amherst senior. "We just don't want violent action." Ms. Oliveros-Larsen said the rally Thursday was not an isolated protest: "We see this as the beginning of a movement." She has joined with colleges in the Amherst area to plan a series of teach-ins, rallies, and benefit concerts in the next week. One Brandeis University sophomore, Judah Ariel, is willing to take the cause even further. "We're discussing whether to have a march on Washington," he said. For now, he's content to hold a march through Boston, joining with other area schools to walk from Copley Square to Harvard Square on Thursday night. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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