Smith Hall is on Strike!
The student-created poster goes on to explain that we are all going to meet at 11, then march over to Sproul Plaza at noon to join the rally. When I first saw this sign on the front door this morning, I thought to myself, "Well, how is the building going to hold picket signs? Will the building be marching over to Sproul Plaza? I'm not sure that all the buildings on campus would fit on the plaza if other buildings are also on strike!" Another staff member wondered what would happen if some sort of altercation started, and a fight were to break out with the building. I chimed in that I would put my money on the building winning that battle. My boss joked that we are obviously failing as an institution of learning and that we should kick out all the students for making such a ludicrous sign. This conversation started after a staff person received a scathing note from a faculty member about her inappropriate use of the word "impact" as a transitive verb. So through some sort of psychological twist, our collective shame at a member of our ranks having been wrist-slapped by a higher grammatical authority was passed along to the dipstick students beneath us for attributing Smith Hall with principles.
Sproul Plaza was crowded at the noon rally today, but maybe not quite as crowded as I expected. The stairs of Sproul Hall were covered with students holding giant signs and banners, but at the meeting point along Telegraph Avenue, maybe a hundred or so demonstration signs sat idle, leaning upside down against the wall. The crowd looked to be made up primarily of students, several hundred or so, but for a campus that has in the tens of thousands of students, it was a little light. My theory is that students have taken this opportunity to skip class and stay home to work on a paper or watch Oprah.
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