ORANGE COUNTY AND THE GULF WAR : Protesters Will Call UC Irvine Campus Home : Vigil: Demonstrators set up encampment and want to live in tents until troops come back. Officials say ‘city’ can stay at least two weeks.

War protesters at UC Irvine found a home on campus Thursday, setting up a makeshift tent city to dramatize their opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf.

Vigil organizers, counting about two dozen activists among their ranks, vowed to man their tents day and night until the war ends.

“The way I see it,” said Karl Yee, 27, the son of a career Air Force officer, “if you feel that the war is wrong and immoral, you’ve got two choices.

“You can go back to your dorm room and turn the stereo up a notch and pretend nothing’s going on, or you can do something about it.” As he handed out anti-war materials to passersby, the graduate student in physics said: “We’re doing something about it.”

Students had planned to set up the tent city as an act of civil disobedience and risk arrest but were surprised a few days ago when the university agreed to allow them to conduct the demonstration legally for at least two weeks.

“We were glad we could accommodate them,” said Randy Lewis, director of student activities. “We’ve got an important international crisis happening, so why not use this as an educational opportunity?”

As students set up seven tents on a paved area next to the campus Cross Cultural Center at midday Thursday, they brought with them sleeping bags, textbooks, flyers and anti-war materials, and even microwave popcorn to put to use in a nearby refreshment area.

By the first day, about 25 people had signed up to participate in the round-the-clock vigil, organizers said. They predicted that perhaps half of this group may spend the night in tents through the first week, returning to dorm rooms in the morning to shower and get ready for class.

The idea, students said, is to show both opposition to the war and support for the troops by living in tents as do U.S. military personnel until the soldiers come home.

A few students, struck by the odd new site on campus, stopped to ask what it was all about.

But most went about their business as usual, preferring to study for the current round of midterms, check out a campus arts-and-crafts bazaar a few yards away, take part in a raucous open-air panel discussion on premarital sex, or just enjoy the summerlike weather.

“If this will make them feel better, great,” sophomore Ken Truong said of the demonstration as he stopped nearby to get a snack, “but I don’t think it’s going to have any impact on the war--there’s nothing we can do about it.”

In recent weeks, a vocal band of anti-war protesters, met occasionally by equally vocal U.S. military supporters on campus, have held large demonstrations with as many as 400 participants--teach-ins, round-the-clock drum vigils and candlelight services at a mock graveyard.

But several activist leaders, citing the perception by students such as Truong that their actions are meaningless, expressed frustration over an apparent lack of momentum and growth in the number of people taking part in the demonstrations. They added that this week’s civilian bombing deaths in Baghdad, together with the prospect of a ground war, could galvanize war opposition on campus.

“The school has a little bit of a reputation for being apathetic,” Yee said, “but we’ll change that.”

Added Allan Affeldt, a doctoral candidate in cognitive sciences who also helped organize the tent city: “The war’s been so sanitized at this point that people can support it. But when they start seeing death and body bags, that will have to change.”

Of course, some apolitical factors have also played into student activism on campus.

Student Angele Theriault of Irvine said that she wanted to bring out the family tent for the latest demonstration but that her mother was afraid it would get “trashed.” And freshman Kerina Lewis of New Jersey said that she initially had taken part in anti-war activities but that lately “the strain of classes kind of got in the way.”