It was the evening of Thursday, Sept. 22. While most Jumbos hunkered down over schoolwork or hit the night's parties, a group of freshmen were gearing up for something bigger: having heard of the opportunity to travel with other Tufts students to a national anti-war protest in Washington D.C., the five friends - Liz Fusco, Arianna Rubin, Rachel Machta, Maia Kolchin-Miller, and Betsy Aronson - gathered at the Crafts Center to make shirts that read "Tufts for Peace."
The freshmen were determined to make their way to this event, despite doubts about the bus transportation that had been publicized for the weekend. "We took things into our own hands," Aronson said.
That Friday, they hopped on a D.C.-bound train, and re-emerged eight hours later in the nation's capital to march the next day protesting the continued casualties in Iraq. They weren't alone: According to the Washington Post, there were an estimated 100,000 participants in the march.
This freshman contingent, traveling free of ties to on-campus organizations, remained focused in their weekend mission. "We felt it was really fun to go, but also serious in terms of the reasons why we were there," Kolchin-Miller said. "Looking at the news coverage, there was a quote from Bush where he said that he disagreed with why we were marching, but he respected our right to march."
"I think that that says a lot about our civil liberties," she added. "We should do this every chance we get, because however effective it is, it's showing we still have the power to organize."
The girls were glad to receive a warm response from non-demonstrators on the trip. "We got such a nice reaction on the way down," Kolchin-Miller said. "The conductor kept giving us stickers and saying, 'You girls are marching for all of us.'"
"They drew stars on our seats. We met a Navy Seal who came and talked with us, and he obviously didn't agree with everything we were working for, but we had a really good conversation," Machta added.
The conditions were less than ideal: the girls slept on the floor and reused clothing. "We wore those shirts for five days straight," said Kolchin-Miller, laughing. "It was ridiculous! They smelled horrible."
But in the end, they decided the conditions were well worth the trip.
"We felt like we were representing Tufts to some extent - people would come up to us and say, 'Oh, I went to Tufts,' or 'I know someone who goes to Tufts,'" Machta said. "It was pretty great - the whole way there was just amazing."
The freshmen noticed a marked contrast between the on-campus attitude towards anti-war activism and the attitude towards anti-war activism in D.C.. "The attitude [in D.C.] was so different from the attitude on campus, where we were standing at the Joey stop and getting looks, like 'Who are these people and what are they doing?'" Fusco said.
At the start of the Iraq War, however, the movement opposing it was more prominent on campus. In fact, the anti-war movement on campus began before the war had even been declared. The Tufts Coalition to Oppose the War in Iraq (TCOWI) was founded by concerned members of the Tufts community during a remembrance ceremony for Sept. 11 that was held in 2002 by the Department of Peace and Justice Studies.
"We passed around a list for e-mail sign-up," TCOWI leader and Physics Professor Gary Goldstein said, adding that at least 40
people showed interest immediately, and that the fledgling group met the next week in Barnum to start organizing.
Since then, TCOWI has become a campus fixture, despite large fluctuations in its membership. TCOWI has organized countless marches, teach-ins, films and rallies since Sept. 2002.
"We've always had progressive, active students working on what we see as the most important issues," Goldstein said. "Those who do participate find an experience that's unique to political activism, and a sense of belonging to a larger group of people. That's an experience every college student should have."
"I feel like the most effective tactics have been bringing big-name speakers to campus, like Noam Chomsky, and trying to get people to take collective action through things like rallies," said history graduate student Dan DiMaggio, a committed TCOWI member. He added that he hopes to coordinate skits on the library patio to emphasize the cost of the war.
DiMaggio said that TCOWI faces different challenges than other activist groups on campus. "The anti-war effort is different because we are not appealing to the powers that be to make change, but rather trying to build a mass movement to force them to end the war and change their policies," DiMaggio said.
But there is some internal disagreement between students and faculty about the goals of TCOWI. "Many of us, in fact, are trying to get the 'powers that be' to change their course and to end the war," Goldstein said. "Our efforts are focused on stopping the war as soon as possible, nothing more."
Goldstein attributes the drop in TCOWI participation to students growing tired of the war as an issue. "Fewer people come to meetings now; there is less interest in [the war]," Goldstein said. "It's becoming clear that it's background noise."
Others speculate that students have found it difficult to commit to organizations like TCOWI because the movement is headed in a new direction.
"I've always been against the war," freshman Hannah Flamm said. "But I can't say that taking the troops home now is definitely the right thing to minimize current problems for the Iraqi people and reduce future conflict."
"It's hard," Flamm continued. "People say, 'How can you be against the war and not want to bring all the troops home now?' I guess there is no obvious answer."
Others say students who remain opposed to the war feel alienated by TCOWI specifically because of its rhetoric and its associations with the Tufts Socialist Alternative.
"My impression is that many Tufts students agree with the general aims of TCOWI," said DiMaggio, who is a member of the Tufts Socialist Alternative. "But I am afraid that some view us as a fringe group."
The freshmen who made the trip to D.C. were concerned with this issue. "[Being associated with the Socialist Alternative] makes a lot of people apprehensive," Aronson said.
