Today, some military officials came to speak at Pitt about future defense strategies and answer questions about current and past topics. At first the men introduced themselves and than began to host a Q & A session which brought up various topics such as forces in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay ethics, presidential candidates, troop removal and other topics. The crowd listened tentatively as the military men answered questions very formally and sensitively. They spoke like they knew they messed up big time, but at the same time they spoke defensively like everything wasn’t they’re fault. There was a very respectful and formal mood to the forum, well, that was until the hippies voiced out.

Dirty, raggedy, long haired…(insert hippie adjectives here) hippies have always been long time enemies with the straight edge, box cut, rifle toting military men. The image of the two sides evokes memories of Vietnam protesting and flowered V.W buses. The heroics behind the protesting the military guys is noble and should be respected, but this just wasn’t the place. Academics requested the military speakers as to get their perspective about the war. The ideas and points of view can be discarded or can be taken into consideration, but that is up to the listeners. The protesters weren’t giving the choice to anyone, they were forcing us to listen to their perspective and now one else.

I can understand the appeal of protesting the military, in fact, I would be down for it any day, but this event was the wrong place. This was a voluntary attendance event tucked away somewhere in a student Union room. No one was forcing anyone to attend or listen to the military men, only people interested went. Unfortunately the only thing that could be heard for about 15 minutes was the quacking of some non-thinking protesters. It was funny, I was laughing for the duration of the 15 minutes.