Students pack Capitol in their plea for peace
11:32 PM 3/05/03
Karen Rivedal Higher education reporter

For more than 20 minutes early Wednesday afternoon, about 2,000 students filled the state Capitol rotunda with defiantly deafening cheers.

"This is what democracy looks like!" they chanted, while bureaucrats stared down from balconies ringing the crowd.

The Capitol rally, which continued until about 5 p.m., was the fevered high point of an all-day student strike at UW-Madison. The event, known as "Books Not Bombs," enlisted college students from around the world to skip school to protest the possible war in Iraq, and in Madison it included about 600 high schoolers and a few middle school kids.

"I don't see how bombing a country of innocent civilians can help," said Fadi Odeh, a UW-Madison sophomore who attended the rally Wednesday toting a Palestinian flag. "The loss of life is not something to be playing with."

Around the country, tens of thousands of students at more than 300 colleges and universities had pledged to join the protests, according to the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition. But attendance was spotty at many campuses and some groups called for support of the Bush administration.

Internationally, thousands of students rallied for peace in Britain, Sweden, Spain, Australia and other countries. The U.S. protests were also geared to call attention to the effects of a war on education, health care and the economy.

In Madison, the rally began about 11 a.m. outside Bascom Hall, where students filled the front yard facing the building. The younger students joined the crowd there.

"If it was just UW students (at the rally), it wouldn't be good," said 12-year-old Sarah Halbach, from O'Keeffe Middle School. "This shows that everybody cares, not just the adults."

Besides the anti-war message, college students cited concerns about rising tuition and decreased access, arguing that federal money for war would be better spent on education. At UW-Madison, students face tuition increases of up to 18 percent next fall.

"We need a shift in priorities," said Tristan Wagner, a fourth-year student studying biology conservation.

Some support for troops
Not everybody was convinced. Most UW-Madison students went to school as usual on Wednesday, largely ignoring the protest, while even those who paused between classes to watch at Bascom Hill appeared more bemused than fired up by the display.

"I think it's kind of funny," said Mike Kopczynski, an electrical engineering junior. "There is no way that the defense budget is ever going to go to education."

At the Capitol, a small group of counter-protesters formally opposed the student rally. Dave Trainor, a Madison firefighter and Navy veteran, said he would support American troops in whatever they might have to do.

"I'm not a warmonger," Trainor said. "We all want peace. But we live in a world with bad people, and I think Saddam is one of them and needs to be taken out."

The protesting students also failed to sway the university administration with their list of demands. Among other things, they want UW-Madison to stop all military-related research, discontinue ROTC programs and take a formal stance against the war.

Provost Peter Spear said UW-Madison was too diverse a community for the administration to legitimately issue one opinion about the war. And he said ROTC and the research would not stop, either, because they were beneficial programs.

But Spear commended the students' participation.

"It's an impressive turnout," Spear said about the protest, which he watched from a second-story window in Bascom Hall. "It says that students are concerned about world affairs and their country."

The rally's general call to action - to stand up and be heard - seemed to bear Spear out. One oft-repeated chant was, "One, two, three, four - we don't want this racist war. Five, six, seven, eight - we will not cooperate."

UW-Chancellor John Wiley was out of town Wednesday. His office issued a statement promising to protect the rights of everyone without granting specific requests.

"I will not accede to any demand that calls for unilateral actions associated with a political agenda," Wiley said. "I will, however, do everything necessary to guarantee that all who wish to express their views on these or other issues have the freedom to do so, without fear of penalty or interference."

Protest stays peaceful
Police reported no problems with the rally. A helicopter seen hovering high over the crowd at both Bascom Hall and the Capitol was from a Milwaukee television station, Capitol Police Chief Mike Metcalf said.

Students organizers of the protest put their crowd numbers at about 5,000. Metcalf said turnout was closer to 2,000, basing his figure on how much street space the crowd filled - about a block and a half, he said - as the protesters made their way from Bascom Hill to the Capitol.

Madison School District officials said 603 high school students took part, or about 7 percent of the student population at its five high schools. All will receive unexcused absences, the district said.

The largest group came from West High School, where more than 250 students poured forth from the Ash Street entrance at about 9:30 a.m. Many wore anti-war T-shirts and carried banners criticizing President Bush.

"We refuse to sit quietly in our classrooms while our brothers and sisters are doomed by the war machine in this country," shouted sophomore Sol Kelley-Jones, 16, during a brief rally outside the school.

The crowd roared as a contingent of about 30 students from Hamilton Middle School rounded a corner of the high school and joined the protest.

"We shouldn't have to pay blood for oil," said seventh-grader Isabel Medina, 13.

The group, now numbering more than 300 and escorted by police cars, marched on sidewalks along Regent Street to link with other protesters on the UW-Madison campus.

The district gave these figures for high school participation: West (258); East (250); Memorial (40); Shabazz (35) and La Follette (20). Edgewood High School, a private Catholic school in Madison, said seven students took part.

By 5 p.m. Wednesday, less than a hundred students remained inside the Capitol. Among them were about 40 students holed up in a reception area with several police guards outside Gov. Jim Doyle's office, waiting for an audience with the governor. A handful of students also were allowed inside to talk with Doyle's staff.

Doyle spokesman Dan Liestikow said the governor would consider meeting with a group of students as part of his regular schedule sometime in the next few weeks.

Legislative staff at the Capitol went about their duties Wednesday with seeming good humor.
"It's great to see them voicing their opposition," said Tryg Knutson, a legislative assistant to Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton.

State Journal reporter Doug Erickson contributed to this story.