UA students protest arrests of anti-war demonstrators

UA students protest arrests of anti-war demonstrators

By Tommy Stevenson
Associate Editor

Corbin Martin addresses student protesters at Denny Chimes on the University of Alabama campus today.
Tommy Stevenson

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TUSCALOOSA | About a dozen students showed up at Denny Chimes on the University of Alabama campus at noon today to protest the arrest of four people who staged a demonstration of tactics they said are being employed by U.S. troops in Iraq.

The mock arrest of three students wearing Middle Eastern-style head scarves by four men dressed as soldiers, who loudly “interrogated” the trio, resulted in the arrest of four people on disorderly conduct charges.

The theatrics were conducted near the dining area of the Ferguson Center on Jan. 29 and those who participated in the protest said Wednesday that rather than disrupting order, their stunt was well received by those who saw it.

“We had planned to do the protest and then leave, but it started a conversation among those there and we hung around for about 15 minutes talking about the Iraq war,” said Tom Keenan, one of the actors and a member of the Students for a Democratic Society, which staged the event.

“Some of the cops who later arrested the four people even waved at us before coming back in force to arrest them.”

UA administrators said the issue in the arrests, which have yet to be adjudicated, is public safety.

“We are a public university so we are very receptive to free speech, but I don’t think we would ever want to hold an event on campus that mimics a true emergency,” Tim Hebson, dean of students told The Tuscaloosa News earlier this month.

The event was meant to attract attention to a speech later that night by an Iraq War veteran Jason Hurd -- a student from the University of North Carolina-Ashville -- who played one of the soldiers and was himself arrested.

The Birmingham chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is considering offering legal representation to the four arrested.

The protest today at Denny Chimes was organized by UA student Corbin Martin, who hosts a talk radio show on student radio station WVUA. He is also an SDS member.

“We, Tuscaloosa SDS, condemn the actions of the university, which we feel was not only exaggerated, but politically motivated,” Martin said.

“We demand that all charges be dropped.

“We want an apology from the university for their attempts to equate protesting with terrorism and violence,” he said, reading from a prepared statement.

“We refuse to be intimidated and harassed on our own campus.”

Will Nevin, a columnist with the Crimson White student newspaper, was even more vocal in his outrage.

“This fear of open-mindedness and free speech is what we are up against,” he said. “What is this ‘free speech zone’? America is a free speech zone.”

Shaking a fist across University Boulevard at the President’s Mansion, Nevin shouted “Hey, Robert Witt, I don’t like you!” to the president of the university,

“Hey, George Bush, I don’t like you either!” he continued, ending with a bit of levity by adding, “Auburn, I hate you!”