Campus Action marks deaths in Iraq
Dylan Breslin-Barnhart
Issue date: 5/4/06 Section: News
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On Monday night, Union's Campus Action group, led for the second year by Ian Kennedy '07, lined the pathways around the Nott Memorial with plywood stakes marking the deaths in Iraq. Like last year, each marker represents an American soldier killed in the ongoing Iraq war, with names and ages written on each marker. Unlike last year, and according to some Campus Action members in a response to prior criticism from left-wing students, slain Iraqis are now also commemorated by a plot in front of the library of 175 nameless markers, with each nameless marker representing 200 Iraqis killed in the conflict.
Deep into Monday night, Campus Action volunteers could be seen tapping the markers into the ground with wooden mallets, their unusual work illuminated in the streetlamps' artificial glow. According to Campus Action, "about thirty Union College students contributed."
John Levene '07, sat on the back of a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup-truck, its bed still full of plywood markers left to be distributed. Levene had spent hours using a table-saw to cut the 2400-plus markers out of 26 four-by-eight foot sheets of plywood. Union College underwrote the fifteen dollar per sheet cost. Additionally, according to Kennedy, "all levels" of the administration approved the Campus Action operation.
But why spend all this work and money when anyone can look up the statistics for American and Iraqi casualties? Kennedy argues that there is a "tendency to be in a bubble at Union" and so creating a "tangible representation…[of the soldiers'] sacrifice is a commemoration" that he feels is important to make as an American citizen. He added that the project is intended to be neither "pro-war nor anti-war," leaving its implications "open to interpretation."
In an apparent validation of Kennedy's assertions, not even all Campus Action members working on Monday night agreed politically. Kennedy, for one, supports immediate American withdrawal from Iraq but another Campus Action member, Steve Po-Chedley '08, thinks that America "can't pull out" of Iraq because the U.S. can't afford to, in what has become a "long-term" struggle.
Deep into Monday night, Campus Action volunteers could be seen tapping the markers into the ground with wooden mallets, their unusual work illuminated in the streetlamps' artificial glow. According to Campus Action, "about thirty Union College students contributed."
John Levene '07, sat on the back of a Chevrolet Avalanche pickup-truck, its bed still full of plywood markers left to be distributed. Levene had spent hours using a table-saw to cut the 2400-plus markers out of 26 four-by-eight foot sheets of plywood. Union College underwrote the fifteen dollar per sheet cost. Additionally, according to Kennedy, "all levels" of the administration approved the Campus Action operation.
But why spend all this work and money when anyone can look up the statistics for American and Iraqi casualties? Kennedy argues that there is a "tendency to be in a bubble at Union" and so creating a "tangible representation…[of the soldiers'] sacrifice is a commemoration" that he feels is important to make as an American citizen. He added that the project is intended to be neither "pro-war nor anti-war," leaving its implications "open to interpretation."
In an apparent validation of Kennedy's assertions, not even all Campus Action members working on Monday night agreed politically. Kennedy, for one, supports immediate American withdrawal from Iraq but another Campus Action member, Steve Po-Chedley '08, thinks that America "can't pull out" of Iraq because the U.S. can't afford to, in what has become a "long-term" struggle.
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