The UCLA branch of Students for a Democratic Society held a demonstration in front of Kerckhoff Hall on Thursday afternoon to protest the war in Iraq.
More than two dozen participants were asked to spontaneously drop dead around noon and lay down with signs that said “U.S. Out Of Iraq” taped to their chests.
The event was also planned to coincide with other student anti-war protests being held at college campuses throughout the nation, including UC Berkeley and Columbia University. Not all protests were die-ins, though, said Eric Gardner, a member of the UCLA branch of SDS.
Babken DerGrigorian, cofounder of UCLA’s pending chapter of SDS, said the group is against the war because they believe it is morally wrong.
“The war in Iraq is one of the main things that we will be working to end. It’s one of the main reasons why we started the club,” DerGrigorian said, adding that the club plans to hold more anti-war events in the future.
Joshua Sweeney, a third-year psychobiology student, said he was offended by the demonstration and said it showed a lack of knowledge of the war.
Sweeney, who is also a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, and who served in Iraq two and a half years ago asked the participants to stand up and stop their protest after walking past the demonstration on his way to class.
“I think it is unfair that they only want to demonstrate the people dying in Iraq. If they could only see what we do over there. … We’re making a difference no matter what the people see over here,” Sweeney said.
The die-in lasted eight minutes before demonstrators stood up and passed out fliers to students passing by. The fliers included statistics from the war, including the number of U.S. soldiers killed so far and the number of Iraqi civilian deaths.
The demonstration was put into motion through Facebook and text messaging, said fourth-year women’s studies student Harmony Shrewsbury.
Shrewsbury said the demonstration was inspired by protests against the Vietnam War in the ’60s and was also the result of a need for an anti-war movement on campus.
“It is so sad that there is no anti-war movement on campus, to my knowledge, and the war has been going on for a while,” Shrewsbury said.