Monday 23 February 2009

Voice

Justin was just telling me about some shitty protest in NYU (New York University) where he studies now. It's like the protesters barricaded the school cafeteria and only dispersed after the school cut off the internet service and nobody could get their Facebook updates.

Apparently protests aren't all that fun and games. Protesters are actually disliked by most normal people, because they end up digressing from the original point of protest to a whole host of other insane and stupid things, turning the passing of a simple day into wading through thick sludge. In this case, things started out as a protest demanding that the school admin reveal the budgeting and funding for the school to ensure that they're not fleecing the students, but then their list of demands grew to include stuff like 'the university must give money to the University of Gaza', 'the university must give 13 full annual scholarships to Palestinian students', 'the school library must be open to the public' (i.e. the school library becomes hobo hotel), 'the school must be all green and vegan' (not that bad on first glance, but then think of all the lefty nutjob ideals about the environment), etc, making life here pale in relative excitement. But I won't stake a claim on whether such excitement is good or bad.

In contrast, when our sociopolitical club Apolitical got registered as a CCA under SMU, we definitely got on the radar and some dude made us register under some government list. The specially-designed system either filters us out somehow, or there are people employed just to sniff us or any potential dissent out. Whee.




We defend democracy by forgoing it.

Audio Candy:
David Garrett - Smooth Criminal

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