Thursday's "Rally for Democracy" lumped crucial ideas with absurd ideas.
Are they protesters? Or are they just crabby?
This is the important question in regards to Ohio University’s contribution to the Million Student March on Thursday in the “Rally for Democracy.”
According to coverage from The Post, the protesters targeted their citizen-activist fury toward a copious list of demands including: tuition free public college; a cancellation of all student debt; a $15 dollar minimum wage; racial inequality; divestment from fossil fuels and prisons; “real food” (whatever that means), and sexual assault on campus.
Despite the practical, political and ideological lunacy of some — though certainly not all — of the ideas shared, I find myself curious what these people want. Are there even enough picket signs in the world to fit all of their demands?
This same microcosm of the university seems to be chronically upset about something — it changes day to day. What will it take to satisfy them? By my account, we’ll need to reduce the price of college tuition to $0 and cancel all student debt while still raising the minimum wage the university has to pay its students despite the lack of revenue, all the while divesting from two profitable revenue streams.
I wouldn’t argue that there’s no merit to these ideas, I would argue that there is no merit to protesting an entire smorgasbord of complaints at the same time.
The worst part of it all is it lumps the crucial ideas in with the absurd. To protest sexual assault and racial inequality — two of the most dire problems facing Ohio University and all college campuses across the country — in the same breath as ideas as absurd as making college entirely free while simultaneously raising the university’s labor costs is a unequivocal and distracting ride-along to the issue.
So at that, I come back to my original question: Are these people protesters? Or just crabby? To me, it seems like these 80 people woke up on the wrong side of the bed and now are causing the general population to lump serious issues in with the nonsensical.
Jacob Zuckerman is a senior studying journalism.
