general
Member
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/03/30/IN51337.DTL
About 2/3rds the way down....
Kid named Dave Galich started a gun club on campus...
Wonder if they need contributions????or other assistance?
FREE SPEECH
Right Side of the Argument
Lonely are the Republicans
Leslie R. Guttman, Insight Staff Writer Sunday, March 30, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether you agree with the war or not, there's no question the soldiers in Iraq are courageous. Another type of bravery -- although far safer -- can be found on the UC Berkeley campus: A tiny contingent of Berkeley College Republicans sits in front of Sproul Hall, badly outnumbered by protesters applauding anti-war speakers.
They sit every day at a little folding table in front of a hand-lettered sign, offering yellow ribbons from a wicker basket to support the troops, next to people waving signs like "Bombing for Peace is like F-- for Virginity." During the huge campus demonstration on the first full day of war, a protester grabbed the basket and threw the ribbons across the plaza. "Here's what I think of your ribbons!" he told them.
Others told the young GOPs they were sick and racist, Republican rangers for death.
"There's a lot of them," said Melanie Smith, 18, as she handed out information, "and a few of us."
On the Cal campus of about 23,000 undergrads are approximately 50 active members of the Berkeley College Republicans. They number about 400 total. They publish a magazine, the California Patriot, that recently ridiculed "The Vagina Monologues." They held an anti-affirmative action bake sale in February where chocolate chip cookies were a quarter for blacks and $1.50 for whites. And they will host the California College Republicans Convention late this month.
One of their most active members, native Frenchman Amaury Gallais, 18, speaks of Bush with the same awe reserved for his other hero, Abraham Lincoln. Gallais, who thinks President Jacques Chirac's nationalistic ambitions for France are superseding concerns about Saddam Hussein, is furious at his history prof for abandoning a recent lecture to give an anti-war speech to more than 300 students.
Gallais says he wants people to know their group exists, separate from the liberal student body, the same way the new recycling bins on campus separate out glass bottles from mixed paper.
"We're not saying, 'Be like us,' " he says. "We're giving people the opportunity of seeing the other side."
Kelly Coyne, 19, opinion editor for the Patriot and secretary of the College Republicans, believes UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl "has been a liability to opening debate on campus."
Coyne is angry about Berdahl airing his views in a recent op-ed piece in The Chronicle that ended: "The lesson of history is that we cannot make ourselves safe or secure by reliance on military superiority alone, as the Bush Doctrine presumes, but by aligning ourselves with the hopes of people everywhere for peace, economic justice, the rule of law and freedom from oppression."
"I understand as an individual, he has an opinion," Coyne says, but adds that the article puts students like her at odds with Cal. Last April, the day before Jewish and Palestinian groups held separate events on campus at which major violence was feared (but did not occur), Berdahl issued a statement that said, "It is our responsibility to provide a neutral forum for individuals and groups to advocate their cause." Coyne says that forum doesn't exist.
Dave Galich, the 22-year-old president of the College Republicans, says in such classes as political science, history, and peace and conflict studies, some College Republicans fear if they give their opinions, it might affect the grades they are given.
Galich is used to standing out, though, having started a gun club on campus last year.
"We wouldn't have our country if we hadn't had the Revolutionary War," he says. "Slavery wouldn't have ended if we didn't have a war."
Gallais says Hussein has made Iraq a safe port for terrorists and no other options but war remain.
At the card table, he and other members hand out articles such as a recent London Times op-ed piece by Parliament member Ann Clwyd, who chairs an organization campaigning to try Iraqi officials for war crimes.
The article quotes witnesses who say they have been tortured under Hussein's regime. They recalled the horror of husbands forced to watch their wives raped, summary executions of dissidents and thousands of Kurdish deaths.
Says Marc Oman, who, with four others, surrounded Gallais in front of Sproul Hall and debated him the other day, "At least he's well-informed, not full of rhetoric. He offers an intelligent debate."
At his childhood home in Larkspur, a Monsters Inc. movie poster on the back of the door to his old room sums up some of Gallais' debate tactics. Below framed pictures of Bush and Chirac, the poster shows the wisecracking eyeball Mike and the spectacularly fuzzy Sulley, with the decree: "We Scare Because We Care."
E-mail Leslie R. Guttman at [email protected].
good kid that Dave Galich
About 2/3rds the way down....
Kid named Dave Galich started a gun club on campus...
Wonder if they need contributions????or other assistance?
FREE SPEECH
Right Side of the Argument
Lonely are the Republicans
Leslie R. Guttman, Insight Staff Writer Sunday, March 30, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether you agree with the war or not, there's no question the soldiers in Iraq are courageous. Another type of bravery -- although far safer -- can be found on the UC Berkeley campus: A tiny contingent of Berkeley College Republicans sits in front of Sproul Hall, badly outnumbered by protesters applauding anti-war speakers.
They sit every day at a little folding table in front of a hand-lettered sign, offering yellow ribbons from a wicker basket to support the troops, next to people waving signs like "Bombing for Peace is like F-- for Virginity." During the huge campus demonstration on the first full day of war, a protester grabbed the basket and threw the ribbons across the plaza. "Here's what I think of your ribbons!" he told them.
Others told the young GOPs they were sick and racist, Republican rangers for death.
"There's a lot of them," said Melanie Smith, 18, as she handed out information, "and a few of us."
On the Cal campus of about 23,000 undergrads are approximately 50 active members of the Berkeley College Republicans. They number about 400 total. They publish a magazine, the California Patriot, that recently ridiculed "The Vagina Monologues." They held an anti-affirmative action bake sale in February where chocolate chip cookies were a quarter for blacks and $1.50 for whites. And they will host the California College Republicans Convention late this month.
One of their most active members, native Frenchman Amaury Gallais, 18, speaks of Bush with the same awe reserved for his other hero, Abraham Lincoln. Gallais, who thinks President Jacques Chirac's nationalistic ambitions for France are superseding concerns about Saddam Hussein, is furious at his history prof for abandoning a recent lecture to give an anti-war speech to more than 300 students.
Gallais says he wants people to know their group exists, separate from the liberal student body, the same way the new recycling bins on campus separate out glass bottles from mixed paper.
"We're not saying, 'Be like us,' " he says. "We're giving people the opportunity of seeing the other side."
Kelly Coyne, 19, opinion editor for the Patriot and secretary of the College Republicans, believes UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl "has been a liability to opening debate on campus."
Coyne is angry about Berdahl airing his views in a recent op-ed piece in The Chronicle that ended: "The lesson of history is that we cannot make ourselves safe or secure by reliance on military superiority alone, as the Bush Doctrine presumes, but by aligning ourselves with the hopes of people everywhere for peace, economic justice, the rule of law and freedom from oppression."
"I understand as an individual, he has an opinion," Coyne says, but adds that the article puts students like her at odds with Cal. Last April, the day before Jewish and Palestinian groups held separate events on campus at which major violence was feared (but did not occur), Berdahl issued a statement that said, "It is our responsibility to provide a neutral forum for individuals and groups to advocate their cause." Coyne says that forum doesn't exist.
Dave Galich, the 22-year-old president of the College Republicans, says in such classes as political science, history, and peace and conflict studies, some College Republicans fear if they give their opinions, it might affect the grades they are given.
Galich is used to standing out, though, having started a gun club on campus last year.
"We wouldn't have our country if we hadn't had the Revolutionary War," he says. "Slavery wouldn't have ended if we didn't have a war."
Gallais says Hussein has made Iraq a safe port for terrorists and no other options but war remain.
At the card table, he and other members hand out articles such as a recent London Times op-ed piece by Parliament member Ann Clwyd, who chairs an organization campaigning to try Iraqi officials for war crimes.
The article quotes witnesses who say they have been tortured under Hussein's regime. They recalled the horror of husbands forced to watch their wives raped, summary executions of dissidents and thousands of Kurdish deaths.
Says Marc Oman, who, with four others, surrounded Gallais in front of Sproul Hall and debated him the other day, "At least he's well-informed, not full of rhetoric. He offers an intelligent debate."
At his childhood home in Larkspur, a Monsters Inc. movie poster on the back of the door to his old room sums up some of Gallais' debate tactics. Below framed pictures of Bush and Chirac, the poster shows the wisecracking eyeball Mike and the spectacularly fuzzy Sulley, with the decree: "We Scare Because We Care."
E-mail Leslie R. Guttman at [email protected].
good kid that Dave Galich