Protest held at CMU

While most students took the day off Monday to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday,… While most students took the day off Monday to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Carnegie Mellon University students only had half the day off.

As a result, Pittsburgh resident Vincent Scottie Eirene held a protest Monday at noon in front of CMU’s Warner Hall.

Classes between the times of 12:30 and 4:30 p.m. were canceled so that students could attend programs honoring Martin Luther King Jr. The programs included an annual state of diversity address by President Jared Cohon, a puppet show for children and a candlelight procession.

“I think it’s an insult to the African American community” that CMU does not fully celebrate King’s birthday, Eirene said.

CMU didn’t begin to take half the day off until 1998, Eirene said. Previously, the school didn’t have any of the day off, he said.

According to Eirene, this was only a “half-baked” gesture on CMU’s part, saying “it’s sort of warm, but it doesn’t taste very good.”

But CMU freshman Dan Papasian did not mind having only half the day off. He said that having to go to morning classes was actually a good thing. Otherwise, he would have slept in and not attended any of the programs, he said.

The protest got a low turnout. Eirene and others handed out fliers while a Martin Luther King Jr. anti-Vietnam speech played on a boom box to gain attention. But the largest attendance there at any one time was about 10 people.

CMU students aren’t apathetic to the cause, they are just afraid of being socially ostracized for attending the protest, Eirene said.