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Sunday, March 19, 2006
Camp Casey on the Quad
Article Launched: 3/19/2006 01:00 AM
Students' crosses spur war thoughts
By Jennifer Brown
DenverPost.com
Under the glow of moonlight and a few lampposts, three Regis University students and a professor pushed 2,309 craft-stick crosses into the quad until 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.
More than a dozen students joined them after peering out their dorm windows at the makeshift graveyard.
Each cross - two sticks glued together and painted white - represented a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.
Later, students crossing the Regis quad on their way to class stopped to choose a soldier's name from the Department of Defense's list of dead and scrawl it on a cross with a marker.
Nearby, students were camped in tents in the center of the Denver campus. The number had grown to 20 toward the end of the week. They called it "Camp Casey on the Quad," after Cindy Sheehan's anti-war camp near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The spirit behind the peaceful protest was to force whoever passed by to think about the war, said Jim Walsh, who teaches history and humanities at Regis.
"It's in the back of our minds," he said of the Iraq war. "I don't think it's out of lack of memory; it's out of fear."
Elle Thomas, a 35-year-old peace and justice major, said the camp was meant to re-engage people in the war by asking them to remember the soldier whose name they wrote on a cross.
"We're not trying to look like leftist hippies just trying to camp out," said Thomas, who had her red hair in braids and wore a T-shirt with the university motto, "How ought we to live?"
"If you have a sense of faith, your faith should guide you. We don't want to get in the middle of the left-right debate. We just want to say, all these people have died, and that's important to realize."
Adrian Manriquez, a 21-year- old sociology and psychology major, has been against the war since the start, when he bought black sheets and tore them into armbands in protest. But, he says, classes and homework and the rest of his life sometimes have pushed activism and discussion of the war off his priority list.
"It's so much to talk about constantly all the time," Manriquez said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jbrown@denverpost.com.
Students' crosses spur war thoughts
By Jennifer Brown
DenverPost.com
Under the glow of moonlight and a few lampposts, three Regis University students and a professor pushed 2,309 craft-stick crosses into the quad until 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.
More than a dozen students joined them after peering out their dorm windows at the makeshift graveyard.
Each cross - two sticks glued together and painted white - represented a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq.
Later, students crossing the Regis quad on their way to class stopped to choose a soldier's name from the Department of Defense's list of dead and scrawl it on a cross with a marker.
Nearby, students were camped in tents in the center of the Denver campus. The number had grown to 20 toward the end of the week. They called it "Camp Casey on the Quad," after Cindy Sheehan's anti-war camp near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The spirit behind the peaceful protest was to force whoever passed by to think about the war, said Jim Walsh, who teaches history and humanities at Regis.
"It's in the back of our minds," he said of the Iraq war. "I don't think it's out of lack of memory; it's out of fear."
Elle Thomas, a 35-year-old peace and justice major, said the camp was meant to re-engage people in the war by asking them to remember the soldier whose name they wrote on a cross.
"We're not trying to look like leftist hippies just trying to camp out," said Thomas, who had her red hair in braids and wore a T-shirt with the university motto, "How ought we to live?"
"If you have a sense of faith, your faith should guide you. We don't want to get in the middle of the left-right debate. We just want to say, all these people have died, and that's important to realize."
Adrian Manriquez, a 21-year- old sociology and psychology major, has been against the war since the start, when he bought black sheets and tore them into armbands in protest. But, he says, classes and homework and the rest of his life sometimes have pushed activism and discussion of the war off his priority list.
"It's so much to talk about constantly all the time," Manriquez said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jbrown@denverpost.com.
posted by Carol at 10:40 PM
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