The Weekly Idiot Award Returns

The following comes from a ‘progressive’ newspaper oddly enough called the Capital Times.
For the first time in Weekly Idiot Award history we’ve got a tie. Although more than 75 idiots were eligible, University of Wisconsin student Ashok Kumar and university employee John Peck take away the (dis)honors:

Four UW students were arrested Thursday after they went into the Army Recruiting Station near campus and demanded that the office be shut down.
The four were among up to 75 people who gathered at University Square Mall Thursday afternoon in an impromptu protest that also drew about 20 officers.
We were mostly protesting that our peers are being sent off to get killed in a dumb war,” said John Peck of the General Defense Office, which offers educational and legal support for demonstrators. The group arranged for a couple of legal observers to attend the protest.
The group gathered at about 2 p.m., when three students, Ashok Kumar, Liz Klainot and Nick Limbeck, and university worker Charlie Hoyt walked into the recruiting office and confronted two recruiters.
“We said, ‘We don’t agree with the practice of taking students and saying we’ll give you an education if you die. We’re not going to leave until you close down this office and turn it into a financial aid office,’ ” Kumar said.
The recruiters immediately locked the doors to keep out other intruders and called police.
The four were taken to the Dane County Jail and handed citations for trespassing, at a cost of $288 each.
Kumar said the group targeted the recruiting office because they see the military as preying on poor students who can’t make tuition during financial aid cutbacks.
“It’s at the center of where new students come it, so for many students who have a hard time with tuition it looks like an attractive offer,” he said.
Peck and Kumar said organizers didn’t make their plans known until several hours before the protest because they didn’t want the recruiting office to close up shop before they got there.
According to Peck, it’s not the last the recruiters will see of the protesters.
“I’m sure there will be further actions for the recruiting station,” he said. “This is not the last one.”

(Emphasis mine.)
Now that’s what I call progress!


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5 responses to “The Weekly Idiot Award Returns”

  1. Darleen Avatar

    Aw geez… not only have ponchos come back from the 70’s we also get this “close down the evil military on campus” crappola, too!
    Um… not all enlistees are “poor”. At this very moment, my daughter Heather is out to breakfast with two of her friends, identical twin brothers who are leaving later today for boot camp with the Navy. They are slated later to train to become SEALs.
    They come from a rather wealthy family, too.

  2. Portia Avatar
    Portia

    They give them an education if they die? Clearly these students have watched a bit much Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
    You know, THIS is why I was terrified Kerry would win — the seventies ethos is in the air and I was afraid we were in for Son of Carter — now even stranger and with more killer rabbits.

  3. B52vet Avatar
    B52vet

    Think of all who died just so these mental midgets would have the right to make fools of themselves. If no one had ever joined the military, there would be no freedom of speech or assembly. The irony of this fact apparently escapes them.
    Incredibly, they’re still in college, yet they already have all the answers and the wisdom of the world. Think how smart they’d be if they ever grew up, moved out of their parents’ basements, and were forced to actually fend for themselves in the real world. It boggles the mind.

  4. B. Durbin Avatar

    Hmm.
    Yes, my father was “poor” when he joined the Armed Forces – as he grew up in a large family, that was inescapable. And yes, he did join them to pay for college.
    BUT – and this is very important – he was going to join the Air Force regardless. He just bumped up his enlistment a few years so that *they* would pay for his education.
    I somehow doubt that the quality of recruits has dropped sharply in the intervening years. (Draftees, of course, being an aberration.) I know that they are ADULTS capable of making their own decisions, not infantilized zombies mindlessly carrying out orders.