The Clarion
Volume 73, Issue 25
SERVING THE BREVARD COLLEGE
COMMUNITY SINCE 1935
April 11,2008
Brevard College
student Radosav
Babic gives a first hand
report on the lessons
he learned while on
BC's mission trip to
Cambodia.
Surveys will go out
next week to measure
student support for a
proposed Tobacco-
Free Campus Plan.
Information on what
has been happening
outside the gates.
See page 3
See page 2
See page 2
Wondering when our gym is going to be
modernized and quit looking like its straight
out of the film "Hoosiers?"
See page 4
Arts & Life Editor Zack Harding catche:
up with local artist Shaimon Whitworth
See page 5
Ever listen to "I'll
Be" on the radio and
wonder what
happened to Edwin
McCain. We tell you.
mm
■Fium
See page 8
Human rights activist
comes to campus
by Zack Harding
Arts & Life Editor
Emotional voices and touchy issues were
key themes in the semester’s 2"‘*LINC event,
and the audience was
left with much to think
about
Last Week on Friday
April the 3'“*, human
rights activist and
author Robin Kirk
spoke in the Myers
Dining Hall, and the
presentation sparked
some poignant
opinions on the ideas of
oppression, torture, and
the abuse of governmental power
Kirk, who is the author the much-praised
book More Terrible Than Death -
Massacres, Drugs, and America’s War in
Colombia, is also the coordinator of the
Duke Human Rights Initiative. Her goal
for the presentation was to ask “what we
can do to restore a respect for human rights
in the world.”
“In my view right now, we are in a human
rights crisis in the world,” Kirk said. To
stress her point she told the audience a bit
about her background and how she stared
as a reporter in Peru during the early 80’s.
The country was in the middle of a civil
war at the time, and the various abuses of
human rights she witnessed stirred her to
action.
In her opinion the United States shifted
from a “great protector” of human rights to
a “pioneer in human rights abuse,” with
the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Though there
are terrorist attacks all over the world, she
said, “In the United States we treat 9/11 as
an exception.” She said that the U.S.
government uses the attacks as an example
of why they should be able to get away
with human rights abuses like water
boarding an psychological torture
methods.
In the weeks following September II,
2001, Kirk said that she was “shocked by
how quick
Americans
jettisoned the idea
of human rights” in
lieu of what they
believed was
protection from
terrorist agencies.
This attitude was
vastly different
than what
Americans
expressed in the
Gulf War, she said, saying that the U.S.
goverimient did not use any policies of
torture in that war
Kirk spoke about the idea that torture has
proved ineffective, and that the American
public has been tricked into believing in
the necessity of it. She said that common
arguments for torture, such as the ticking
time-bomb scenario, “never happen.”
“Our Military is doing an excellent job,”
Kirk said, pointing out the root cause of
human rights violations. “The problem is
our government. The problem is the Bush
Administration, and the problem is the
C.I.A.”
Several audience members contributed a
good deal to the dialogue. One student
spoke about the question of whether
military forces can be seen as liberators or
dominators, expressing that she felt that
they always tended toward the latter
Kirk closed the night by making a plea for
students to get involved. “I think our
government thinks they can get away with
this stuff because they think that we don’t
give a damn.”