Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Mob Rule at GU’ Not Quite

Mob Rule at GU? Not Quite

By Colin Relihan Hoya Staff Writer

In Leo J. O’Donovan’s, S.J. office, there were 27 60s-style anti-establishment anarchists attempting to come up with ways to bring down the “man.” To many of you, this sounds incredibly silly. To others, this assessment doesn’t seem like it would be too far off the mark. I address this column to those of you who thinks that the anti-sweatshop sit-in marked the beginning of anarchy here at Georgetown.

Contrary to some of the things that I have heard since Friday, the protesters who sat in O’Donovan’s office are not hippies. They look like a group of average Georgetown students. In fact, these protesters are not just college students who took a philosophy class and then decided that they should save the world. There are SFS students and even (oh dear God!) business school students. Basically, those 27 people that some wrote off as extremists look like a basic cross-section of Georgetown, or more importantly, what Georgetown should strive to be.

I’m not saying that we should all go out and blockade people’s offices. That would be ludicrous. But I am saying that we should care. No matter what you may say about the tactics involved, there is no way that anyone can say that those 27 sitters don’t care about those working in sweatshops.

So what do you care about? Did you care that the administration didn’t care? Or did you just go along your with your daily lives trying not to rock the boat? Perhaps, in this case, the boat should be rocked. Maybe Georgetown Solidarity isn’t a flock of Communists. They’re right in believing that sweatshop labor is wrong, and that Georgetown has been wrong in giving, through its apathy, its tacit approval to sweatshop labor.

So, perhaps they were right in marching into O’Donovan’s office. Why not? If you believed in something that strongly, and then were treated like a band of peons, an unimportant cog in the overall workings of this university, what would you do? Would you sit back, take your loss and forget about it? That doesn’t seem like a very strong belief. Or would you stand up for what you believed, and in your loudest voice, proclaim to the university, to the world, that you felt that an injustice is being performed?

Buildings weren’t blown up, trains weren’t derailed and hostages weren’t taken. All these 27 students did is protest an injustice in the loudest voice they knew how to make. So perhaps before you wrote off Georgetown Solidarity as a bunch of radical beatniks, you should have gone up to Healy and talked to them. Now that they’re out of the office, you still have a chance. Hopefully when you do talk to them, you will see your own reflection.

The Open Forum appears Tuesdays in The Hoya.

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