ON CAMPUS: "Protest? Or Not?"

We invite students to come to our universities and learn, to come and grow, to come and think through the strange and bewildering world they're inheriting from the rest of us. I don't see how any governor or university president can justify sending state troopers at a group of students protesting war, questioning investments and militarism, exploring nonviolence as a path the ending genocide. Isn't this exactly the kind of thing universities are supposed to be encouraging? A questioning heart? A curious mind? A student willing to explore current events with other students, and eager to ask about the whys and hows of making the world a better place? I believe we should encourage them, invite them to deeper conversations, set up symposia, negotiate. But troopers with weapons? Tearing down what these students have created? Seems wrong to me.