A student panel from the Coalition for Peace spoke against the war in Iraq and discussed its negative effects on human rights and the economy Thursday night.
About 150 students came to the panel, which focused on how the war affects human rights, homelessness, the environment, women’s issues and the economy. Five different students spoke on each of these issues as representatives from several of the 25 student groups that are part of the Coalition for Peace.
Mohammed Tajsar, a fourth-year English and comparative literature student who helped to create the Coalition for Peace, said he hoped the panel would allow students to see that the war is not as far removed as they may sometimes think.
“We want ourselves engaged in how the war affects us,” Tajsar said. “It is one thing to have professors or veterans talk about it, but we want to show how it actually affects every student.”
Representing the United Arab Society and the Iranian Student Group, Combiz Abdolrahimi, a fourth-year political science student, spoke about how some of the rights of the Iraqi people have been violated during the war. One in seven Iraqis has left their homes because of the violence, he said.
Rahim Kurwa, a member of Food Not Bombs and the Social Justice Alliance, discussed how mental and physical disabilities caused by the war have left many veterans on the street.
“Seventy-four percent of those on the street have some kind of disability,” Kurwa said. “The way we treat our physically disabled veterans shows how poorly we treat our physically disabled in general.”
Michael Tank, a member of environmental student group E3, spoke on how our consumption of oil helped motivate the U.S. to go to war. The United States contains 5 percent of world’s population but uses 30 percent of the world’s resources, he said.
Because of our consumption habits, we have to go to developing nations and use their resources, he said.
Ashley Tucker, vice president of Bruin Feminists for Equality, said that women’s rights, though lacking under Saddam Hussein, have not improved. She said that honor killings of women who have broken Islamic law continue, and the Bush administration has redefined torture to no longer include rape.
“And all this is under the guise of bringing democracy and freedom,” she said.
The last presenter, Tom King, focused on the direct affect of the war on the cost of college education and examined how the money for the war could have been used to dramatically increase funding for public schools.
King, a member of Sigma Alpha Lambda honor society and Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, said the UC budget has been cut by $332 million while more and more of the federal budget is being allocated toward the war.
“If that money didn’t go to the war, think what could we spend it on,” said King, a third-year history student.
After the students spoke on their individual topics, audience members asked questions and gave their own thoughts on the war. The dialogue quickly turned to how current presidential candidates would have an effect on the war if in office, with each panelist giving their thoughts on which candidate would be best.
Audience members also relayed their own stories of how the war had affected them. One student described how one of his college friends is now in Iraq and e-mails him with vivid details of his service.
“I don’t know how he can live through this,” he said, recalling stories his friend told him of days without sleep and friends dying before his eyes.
“I don’t know how he is going to come back and be a student again. This is real. It is affecting the students around us,” the he said.