Letter: Protesters' important message deserved an audience

Although the majority of the students and other people affiliated with the University felt that Thursday's protest, which involved blocking traffic to and from the West Campus bus stop for a half hour, was uncalled for, ridiculous and did nothing other than cause them to be late for class and other engagements, it happened to make my day. I was very proud that we still have some students here at Duke who are not afraid to stand up for what they believe is right. The purpose of stopping traffic was to say to the Duke community that things should not be "business as usual."

The overall feeling of apathy about the war on this campus sickens me. The fact that people were yelling at the protesters because they had a class to get to or some meeting to make was disgusting. In my opinion, people like that are what allow this war to go on today. People are more concerned with how the war will affect their financial well-being than the many people that have already died and will die because of this unjust war. To me, worrying about grades is just as superficial, if not more so than worrying about being late to work. A girl on the bus after the protest said, "Why don't they go protest somewhere like Washington? The war is almost over anyway, what's the point? All it did was inconvenience people and make me wet." Before you make a statement like that, just imagine being an Iraqi citizen who just lost his or her son in the crossfire in Baghdad. The war almost being over is no consolation to that parent, and the fact is that the war is nowhere near over and many people, both Iraqi and American, will still die. A responsible American citizen protests wherever he or she find a group of people who will come together to denounce injustice.

If the students did not make the statement they made Thursday, who would have? Before you write off Thursday's events as being worthless, think about how much more it made you think and speak about the war than you would have normally done. The protest served its purpose, the people were heard and this made me proud to be an American.