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Yesterday, I took part in an
action to protest my alma mater's choice of commencement
speaker. As many of you know, I graduated from
Boston College a (long)
while back, and yesterday the university bestowed an
honorary degree on Condoleezza Rice, and allowed her to give
the commencement speech.
A friend of a friend had
gotten tickets for us, and we went in with a large banner
that read: "BC HONORS LIES & TORTURE." There is good footage
of the action on New England Cable News, which you can
access here (look for "Students protest secretary of state
Monday"):
NECN
There are other photos on the
Boston Indymedia site.
Now, I'll be honest:
Condoleezza Rice can host a Tupperware Party, and I will be
there to protest. She's a war criminal, in my opinion. The
Nuremberg Judgment states:
"War is essentially an evil
thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent
states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war
of aggression, therefore, is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only
from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."
There's also the matter of the
Fourth
Geneva Convention, which deals with the treatment of
civilians during wartime.
For Condi to make a speech in
front of a crowd at an institution that purports to uphold
Jesuit teachings was really beyond the pale. It called for
action, and I'm proud that my friends and I were able to
confront both Rice's true record and BC's complicity in
trying to rehabilitate it.
BC heavily promotes its Jesuit
tradition. "Deeply rooted in its Catholic and Jesuit
origins, Boston College offers an education that is
distinctive in spirit and content, that is doubly rich with
the best of human thought and with the profound insights of
faith," declares
Reverend William P. Leahy, SJ, President of Boston
College.
It was hard to square my knowledge about Rice, her lies and support for
the invasion and occupation of Iraq, with the sycophantic
praise of BC's leaders about her commitment to service and
higher learning.
There were other protests
inside Alumni Stadium yesterday, but they were fairly
low-key. There was also
an op-ed in
the Boston Globe a couple weeks ago by an adjunct
professor who resigned over the whole affair. I thought he
pretty much hit the nail on the head.
From the Media Watch
Department, it's kind of funny to read the Boston Globe's
story that claims "the graduation passed uneventfully, with
no arrests and no evictions from Alumni Stadium," and then
click on the NECN video link which is right beside the Globe
article and hear their reporter describing our action: "some
protesters unfurled a very large sign, 'BC HONORS LIES &
TORTURE'... out of view of Rice but in plain view of the
crowd." And, of course, we were "evicted."
The Associated Press report,
which appears in today's Boston Herald, mentioned the banner
but said it was "removed within a minute." Well, we have
video of the whole thing, and it was up for about five
minutes.
A minor discrepancy, to be
sure, but you'll note that they never err on the high side
when they make these sorts of mistakes. I called the
reporter to find out how she came up with the under 60
seconds figure, and she conceded that she pretty much
guessed. And that's how the "first draft of history" gets
written.
My hope is that BC will try to
find more appropriate speakers in the future if they are
serious about being an institution that upholds Jesuit
ideals. Maybe someone like
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, the "voice of
the voiceless," who was taught by the Jesuits at the
national seminary in San Salvador, and was a hero to the
poor people of his country. Unfortunately, the Archbishop
isn't available for speaking engagements anymore - he was
assassinated by U.S.-trained death squads while saying Mass
in 1980, when many members of the current Bush/Cheney
administration were serving in the Reagan/Bush
administration.
As I said to the BC cops as
they were radioing our IDs to the Boston Police Department,
"Hey, guys, the real criminal is giving the speech." | 
