(KRT) With their fall terms well under way, college students across Washington state are slowly turning their attention to what many see as the growing potential for armed conflict between the U.S. and Iraq.
“I think people are interested and staying informed,” said Western Washington University student Nate Johnson, 26. “With Iraq, there’s been a lot more time to think about it. There’s history there. There’s a lot more awareness.”
But in contrast to the anti-war activism that swept many U.S. college campuses during the Vietnam era, students in Washington haven’t mobilized in great numbers.
Johnson, a member of a student group at Western called the Associated Students Peace Resource Center, believes that could be about to change. Johnson and his colleagues are among many students at Washington colleges and universities in the early stages of planning events aimed at stirring debate in their communities.
At Seattle University, philosophy professor Gary Chamberlain, who has worked with students to help organize several on-campus anti-war protests this year, said interest there is on the rise.
“For some of the students, it’s just a real dissatisfaction with the American foreign policy in general,” said Chamberlain, while “some of them just look at the war and don’t see a rationale for it.”
But Mike Wallin, 19, a member of the University of Washington College Republicans, said his group believes military action against Iraq is justified. Wallin said he and others plan to publicly demonstrate their support for Bush administration policies.
Wallin said he senses that many UW students hold similar views but that many are reluctant to speak out because it’s easier to either remain silent or take popular positions in favor of things such as clean water, clean air or lower college tuition. “It’s easy to say all those things,” Wallin said, but this “is a war. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
At some campuses, discussions, sing-alongs, meetings, lectures and forums related to the war are starting to occur more frequently. Even so, some say the level of activism among today’s college students is a far cry from what it was for those who came of age during the civil-rights, women’s rights and Vietnam War eras.
“There was a direct sense of persecution then that there’s not now,” said Seattle University music professor Jim Ragland, a self-proclaimed anti-Vietnam War student activist in the early 1970s. “I don’t find that readiness to be outraged. It’s all become very mushy.”
Across town at the University of Washington, some students are attempting to take action. Many participated in anti-war events in downtown Seattle earlier this month, and more are expected to take part in similar events later this month.
UW students can often be seen on campus handing out anti-war literature and staging various demonstrations to spark interest and involvement. Jessica Long, a senior, said she and other UW students are also working to form coalitions with high-school and other college students in the state.
Logan Price, 19, who attends Seattle Central Community College, believes that any U.S. military conflict with Iraq would be more about oil in the Middle East than about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and whether he controls weapons of mass destruction.
“When Saddam Hussein has been on our side, we didn’t have a problem with him,” Price said. “The way I see it, war is a way of securing access to a country’s resources.”
Those sentiments are echoed by many at Washington State University, according to student leaders there. But to date, there have been no large on-campus events focused on potential military action.
“We’re more of a `discuss-it-among-ourselves’ kind of community,” said WSU student-body President Scott Dickinson, 21.