If life has taught me anything, it's that a large gathering of people with a singular opinion is inevitably bound to produce something really fucking stupid. Because when an opinion is stated by an individual, it can be discussed and modified over time to suit nuance and to remain logical. But when it is joined by hundreds of other mouths, volume trumps levelheadedness and everything goes to shit.
App State Student Power, an organization with an ostensibly sincere goal, has proposed a walk out this afternoon at 2pm. This comes in retaliation of the Chancellor's email about parking and the adverse effects it will have on students and faculty/staff alike. This is nifty keen. That email was, and still is, a crock of shit and an insult to an institution that purports to value education over, you know, footballllllllll. I even stirred the pot a little myself.
But.
BUT.
The football game is at 7:30pm. Not 2pm when this "walk out" will occur. Don't get me wrong, the idea of gathering a whole host of students and faculty and shouting about how much this whole shebang sucks and acts as an unworthy and bloated distraction from actually important shit is, decidedly, appealing to my proclivities. But the game is at 7:30. PM.
The problem isn't (just) that this little rag-tag team of protesters and angry-people will be missing their mark by five and a half hours. Nor is it (just) that they will be missing an opportunity to make a larger impact (the game will be on ESPNU). The problem (mostly) is that a walk out at 2pm implies that people will be walking out of their classes. Otherwise, what else would they be walking OUT of? This is where the "fucking stupid" element of the whole ordeal comes in to play.
If your goal is to protest athletics' dominion over education in the modern university setting (namely, ours), don't you think leaving class to go shout about football seems a little counterintuitive?
Granted, not everyone will be in class at 2pm when this walk out occurs and you'll get a lot of people just wandering in out of curiosity and a whole lot of people probably wandering in to shout back at you. But, look, I understand what you're TRYING to do. I understand the whole civil disobedience, making a statement rah-rah-rah of it all. But it's just not going to hit its mark in the way you think it is.
Mainly, because the public values flair over fact. The flair is that a bunch of students walked out of class at 2 in the afternoon to shout in a field. The flair is that students and faculty directly violated their supposed love of education by neglecting it in favor of a fun day in the sun. The flair is that football still happened in spite of all this and a movement that could have made an impact fizzled out 5 hours before the actual game.
What matters isn't what actually happened, but how people hear it happened. And people will not hear good things. My advice to you? Push your protest to 6:30. Yell outside the gates. Wave pencils and pocket protectors and your spectacles at drunk passerby. They'll hate it, but goddamit you'll seem real fucking dedicated to education. Gather a big group of students and distribute them throughout the stands. Make a scene by getting them all to stand up at the same time and walk out of the stadium. Cameras will notice, stories will be written, all because the media loves a good controversy.
But don't walk out of fucking class. Please? I am not one of the knuckle-draggers commenting on the Walk Out Facebook page who thinks that "hur dur App State football is part of our proud heritage" (Appalachian State was founded as a teaching college, fyi). I understand that this whole thing you're protesting is wrong and that you are right. But what's the point of being right if you say it badly?
Stay in school, don't watch football and for god's sake think before you join a mob.
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