SCUBA’s YoUBe For Peace

MONDAY, MARCH 29th- The student body welcomed Frida Berrigan of the War Resisters League, at “yoUBe for Peace” hosted by the Social Cerebral Club at the University of Bridgeport in America (SCUBA), on Monday evening. Berrigan, a Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center, and a guest speaker addressed war profiteering in Iraq by the current administration.
The event was had a good attendance, filling the Social Room in the Student Center with interested professors and students alike. The tables were set up to include a faculty member in order to promote a diverse discussion during the intervals of questions and answers. The students although having mixed feelings on the subject responded well to the format of the discussion. Karishna Pillai, president of SCUBA stated, “It was interactive, students could interject and voice their opinions.”
Berrigan presented the issues of using tax dollars to support and contract companies such as Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Company and Bectel. These companies are most often hired to assist de-colonized and failed states in institution building as well as the creation of proper security forces. In the case of Iraq, the companies are used to keep the military in operation, these tasks include providing provisions, laundering services, sewage disposal, and power as well as preventing and stopping oil well fires. Recent use of Halliburton has resulted in cries of war profiteering across the nation particularly because of the fact that Vice President Dick Cheney was a former CEO of Halliburton. The issue, as implied by Berrigan is that the Bush administration went to war with Iraq specifically for awarding these companies, giving them unreasonable amounts of money to accomplish menial tasks that would have been better suited in the hands of the military. She also applied the same reasoning to the companies used for weapons manufacture. The responses to such a stance were wide and varied. Some were bewildered by the staggering billion dollar figures presented. SCUBA’s president commented that , “Her presentation was very factual. She obviously had an opinion but didn’t say anything that couldn’t be supported by facts.” Senthil Balasubramanian said, “It was an eye-opener and I hadn’t realized how deeply the corruption ran. Everyone should know and SCUBA did a good job.” Other students found her method questionable, her position somewhat extreme and noticed the presence of a political bias. Tamami Kawamura said “Not only was she not a strong speaker but it seemed like she manipulated facts in order to make her point.”
The general campus consensus describes the speaker as a typical liberal peace activist and students were not surprised by some of the strong political implications. Ely Loew, commented, “She’s an ideologue and she used phrases that all liberals use when dissing Bush. I could have written her speech for her.” Despite some of the negative feedback, the students found the event refreshing and were pleased with the SCUBA hosted event. It was overseen by Professor Thomas, and was a valiant effort to provide a diverse approach at examining current issues.
SCUBA meets every Thursday at 4 pm on the fifth floor of the library to analyze and comment on current events, encouraging everyone to expand their horizons through debate and higher learning.