“Oh yeah? You don’t like genocide? Well you don’t get your cap and gown ceremony. So there.”
That’ll show 'em.
You know you can just take the diploma and not show up? My college wanted like $200 for the official cap and gown. I said fuck that and moved out graduation weekend.
They mail out the real diploma anyway.
“Oh well you didn’t get that memory!” Of what? Being fleeced by the corporation that just fleeced me for four years, so I can be hot for 3 hours sitting nowhere near anyone I’ve met before? No thanks, I went to dinner with my GF (now wife) and had more fun than anyone who went.
Definitely shitty of them, but my point is that I doubt anyone at USC protesting this genocide is all that concerned with not getting a graduation ceremony right now.
From the article:
The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school commencement ceremonies.
So it looks like they still have a regular ceremony from from the individual school, as usual. Just the main commencement is canceled. Everyone will still get their moment.
ruin someone’s moment
And how many lives were ruined in last 80 years because of USA’s foreign policies?
Man… I support the Gaza protests. But this is a stupid take. I hope instead of going to work or celebrating your birthday, or getting married, or doing anything remotely joyful, you protest Gaza. If you’re not giving up life’s big moments in solidarity with Gaza, you’re not honoring their ruined lives.
Edit: I hope the people downvoting are out protesting right now. Don’t be hypocrites. Rather than downvoting on Lemmy, you should be canceling all other activities in your life and try to get arrested for Gaza.
The graduation ceremony isn’t your reward for your work. At least, it shouldn’t be. Your reward for graduating is the opportunities that you’ve opened for yourself for the next chapter of your life. I didn’t go to mine and I haven’t regretted it for a second. The knowledge didn’t leave my brain, at least not as a result of missing graduation.
My memory of my high school graduation ceremony was staring into the hot sun sweating up a dress shirt under a cheap and useless polyester smock that cost me a lot more than it cost to make while people I didn’t care about and who didn’t care about me made speeches with completely fake gravitas. It was the last time I saw a couple dozen people whose names I used to know and a couple hundred people whose names I never learned.
Why the fuck do we still bother with this crap? Who is it for?
Why is everyone afraid of college students protesting? I mean this police state response goes back to before Kent State and Tianemen square no doubt.
Well if it’s frightening- keep it up! There must be some form of agency there
I don’t think it’s the protesting, but rather the target of the protests. For some reason Israel seems to be held in higher regard than any American interest. We can protest and shit talk our own terrible politicians all day long and nobody really bats an eye. But ask that we stop murdering innocent brown children in Gaza? Threaten economic consequences for Israel if they don’t stop the murder? For some reason that is a grave offense worthy of trampling on our first amendment rights.
Think about how wild that is - speaking out against the atrocities a foreign government is committing is worthy of taking away your freedom in the US.
The joy of a country run by religious loons that believe Israel will kickstart the Second Coming for them.
Remember, everyone: they want Israel to start a serious war in the Middle East. Because that’s the first step in all the Jews dying and those old rich white Christians being raptured up to heaven.
If anything, the only reason they don’t want it to start now is because they haven’t convinced all the Jews to go back to Israel yet.
I think it is just as simple as “oh no the youths” reminder when Reagan was governor of California he cracked down on a small protest over some benign shit, it wasnt even violent until Reagan stepped in the students and administrators were in talks about the whole situation.
Historically, it seems like they can inspire a whole nation especially if demonstrators get hurt or get killed by the police or military
Eventually every mishandled conflict becomes about the response to the conflict instead of the issue that started it. I still remember the end of OWS when no one was talking about the bailouts anymore instead talking about the difference between camping and protesting I also remember the daily reminders that some anti-war protestor in 2003 threw acid at a cop.
People have the right to make their voice heard. Governments should understand that, establish areas where they can make it heard, and do nothing to make it turn violent. Likewise protestors should make sure that they focus on the issue they care about an expel ones that start shit.
some anti-war protestor in 2003
It’s weird how now the protests are labeled “pro-Palestinian” instead of “anti-war” as they always have before. In 2003 people were anti-war, not pro-Iraqi. In the '60s people were anti-war, not pro-South-Vietnamese. Some propaganda outlets are even calling today’s anti-war protesters “pro-Hamas”.
Disruption is an essential part of protest, otherwise it can just be entirely ignored. It’s meant to force results. If there’s enough support for it, it grows as the government cracks down on it (like BLM did in 2020) and becomes a conflict of attrition. If there isn’t, then the protesters get punished and the people celebrate it (like the truckers protesting covid restrictions in Canada).
They aren’t.
They are afraid of being labeled anti-semitic. That is what is driving this. Allowing the protests to exist gets the uni/president labeled anti-semitic, and that is unacceptable for the universities. The universities are then asking the police to break them up by force, because violent against students is more acceptable than being labeled anti-Semitic.
This is why freedom of speech is important and why it’s important to argue specifics instead of generalities.
It’s easy to say something is “antisemitic” and get an emotional response from useful idiots. It’s a lot harder to explain why something is antisemitic and get the same response if it’s not actually antisemitic.
Why is everyone afraid of college students protesting?
Its not fear, its a show of force. This is an opportunity to unleash pent up rage and inflict callous brutality on a group of people that mass media have flogged and hated on for decades. College students are poor, weak, and exceptionally vulnerable. Teachers are poor and overworked and increasingly precarious in their employment. College campuses are hotbeds of Marxism according to your average Boomer or news hour talking head.
So this is where municipal and state officials can drop the hammer unimpeded. This is where they can really indulge in their fascist impulses. This is where they know nobody will try and stop them.
I mean this police state response goes back to before Kent State and Tianemen square no doubt.
If Tienanmen Square happened in DC today, the guy standing in front of the tank would be labeled at Tankie by the NYT Op-Ed section.
The kids are alright.
I feel like this is having a bit of a Streisand effect.
Watching the American democracy go down and the Palestinian people with it. So many young people losing hope and the alt right will elect a man even more opposed to the Palestinian cause than the current government of the United States. What a time so be alive.
Maybe it’s our turn to storm the capitol (peacefully) and establish actual fucking democracy (peacefully).
the alt right will elect a man even more opposed to the Palestinian cause than the current government of the United States
It always gets me when we’ve got a government in which both parties rubber stamp another $4B genocide re-armerment bill, and you’ve still got some chucklefucks logging on to say “We need to support Biden if we want to help Palestinians”.
Like, fucking fine. He’s marginally better on Net Neutrality and maternity leave and green energy and student debt relief.
But maybe lets not drag 40,000 Palestinian corpses into the room and say “They want you to vote for Joe Biden, too”.
I don’t want to vote for anyone, because I am not a US citizen, but if I were, yes, I would say vote for Biden regardless. Why? Because even as a non US citizen I know enough about Project 2025 and this is not the future I want to see for this world. One good thing about Biden is that he will leave office when he loses. Last time Trump lost you nearly got a coup d’etat. But yeah, my comment wasn’t exactly about Biden vs Trump but more about the hopelessness of the current situation where it seems to get worse irrelevant of the direction you go.
