Editorial: Pointless, as usual

Last Thursday, a group of protesters blocked traffic at the intersection of the traffic circle and Chapel Drive, preventing buses and other vehicles from reaching or leaving Main West Campus. Ostensibly, this protest was against the war in Iraq; however, in practice, this demonstration accomplished almost nothing, because the protesters did not have a well-defined purpose for blocking traffic, because it is unclear whom or what they were trying to influence by protesting and because the war in Iraq essentially ended Wednesday, a day before the protest was staged.

These protesters should be criticized for several reasons. First, this protest served no intellectual purpose and did not foster either debate or discussion about the war; rather, by preventing students from getting to class, this protest was directly at odds with an informed campus debate. Second, this protest gives a bad name to students who may have legitimate reasons for being against the war, people who have real questions about what the United States is doing in Iraq, and people interested in genuine consideration of the issues at hand. Third, this protest was a waste of time for those inconvenienced by the protest'Äîwithout choice'Äîand for the protesters themselves, who should have found a much better use for that half hour.

While the protesters should shoulder most of the blame for the events of last Thursday, the administration and the Duke University Police Department abdicated their responsibility to enforce the rules of this University by standing idly by and letting this wholesale disruption of campus continue.

The chief of the DUPD seems not to understand that the role of the police is not to protect the safety of protesters but rather to enforce the laws and rules. Consequently, the proper response to this protest from the police would have been either to arrest the protesters for violating the law or, at the very least, to stop them from violating the law by removing them from the middle of the street.

Some--including the chief of police--might argue that these protesters have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. However, since Duke University is a private institution, protesters do not have these rights, and, even if they did, forming a human shield in the middle of the road goes beyond speech and assembly and crosses the line into illegal behavior that should be punished.

What is particularly disturbing about this incident is that the University is discriminating based on the content of speech by allowing this protest to go on when it has not allowed less-disruptive demonstrations in the past. In the fall, the DUPD removed Christian fundamentalists who were spouting anti-homosexual rhetoric in front of the West Union Building from campus--and these individuals were not even blocking traffic, just talking, unlike Thursday's protesters. Or, if a student wanted to protest the parking policy by illegally parking his or her car in the middle of the road blocking traffic, the police would surely get involved and stop the incident. It is disgusting that the University would allow these demonstrators to break the law without consequence when it would stridently enforce the law against other types of demonstrations.

The protesters should be condemned for their illegal actions and the administration and DUPD should be condemned for their cowardly response to this flagrant violation of the law.