The Persian Gulf War--the Student Front : At Alabama, Prayer Over Protest

During a forum held a week ago at the University of Alabama to discuss Operation Desert Storm, one of the panelists appealed to the students not to vent their anger and frustrations on people with opposing views. The note of caution was unnecessary: Students here have treated the outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf with near-apathy. Barely 50 people were in the hall, many of them non-students.

Not that there have been many pro-war rallies on this 20,000-plus campus. In fact, there have not been any campus demonstrations, if one discounts such symbolic gestures as sorority sisters holding five-minute candlelight vigils. Elsewhere in the region, the murmurs of protest have been exactly that--murmurs. Save for a demonstrator in Birmingham, who told the local media that he was arrested because he was gay, there has been hardly any commotion or ruckus. Unlike the Vietnam War days, when universities became forums of popular protest, today’s campuses in the South display a distinct lack of passion.

Southerners, in general, have “assimilated” the war into their lives. A member of the Alabama National Guard and the university’s ROTC program, who may be activated for duty, was quoted by the student newspaper as saying, “I expected the war, and now I will do what I am told.” The University of Alabama president convened a special convocation to award a gulf-bound student his bachelor’s degree rather than wait until the end of spring. The Student Government Assn. Senate, in its routine Thursday night meeting, passed a resolution supporting the U.S. forces in the gulf. Life is a ceremony here, and everything, even war, has somehow got to fit into it.

Operation Desert Storm did not paralyze normal social business. The weekend soirees went on as usual in this party school. The only difference was the revival of Bob Dylan peace songs and the addition of CNN to the bars’ staple of ESPN and MTV. The war’s beginning did next to nothing to undermine traditional interests: watching ball games, getting money, spending it and showing off.

There is something deeply troubling about all this--not just because the region that has contributed perhaps the largest number of troops is simply sitting back and watching the war take its course. Rather, it is because there is no mobilized effort to stimulate debate. Some attribute this to a lack of leadership. But this argument doesn’t hold up when previous protest rallies on other issues central to this region are considered.

Perhaps it is because Alabamians historically have supported the military. Almost everybody knows somebody who’s stationed in the gulf. Since Americans were deployed there, the local media have been saturated with reports of servicemen and women bidding farewell to their loved ones. Add to this the “excitement” of up-to-the-minute television coverage of the allied air attacks on Iraq and you have the ingredients for overwhelming support for the U.S. gulf effort.

The deeply religious folks are not as gung-ho about war, but their inaction is no less disturbing. There seems to be no special effort to wage peace, only more and more prayers for the safety of fellow Americans fighting the war. In Alabama, it’s time for prayer, not protest.