Katie and Other Students Upset at Political Demonstration

Texas A&M is commonly perceived as a very conservative school, and that fact has never bothered me even though I am a pretty liberal person in general. However, on Oct. 31, in response to the election, a small group of students demonstrated their opinions towards Barack Obama by setting up a "carnival" where you could come up to a table, express your thoughts about Obama, be handed an egg, and throw the egg at a poster of his policies (which happened to be placed right above his picture; the egg would run down on his picture as well).

This upset the majority of students that I talked to, whether they were Obama supporters, McCain supporters, or were indifferent. The event was featured on CNN, which embarrassed me and a lot of my fellow Aggies. A&M doesn't stand for hateful things like this. Texas A&M's students pride themselves on unity, and that day, I was embarrassed to go to school with those people. I was not, however, embarrassed to be an Aggie, only because of the negative reaction most students had towards the "carnival".

The general opinion that day that I got from students and observers was that a demonstration like this was crossing the line, no matter what candidate you were throwing eggs toward. I brought my video camera with me to the "carnival" and I interviewed a handful of students, both Obama and McCain supporters. Keep an eye out for me to post the video on my MySpace.

Out of every bad situation comes good, though. It was awesome to see that students were voicing their political opinion and weren't complacent anymore. We need discussion on our campus about issues like this, and it was interesting to see students who were liberal on such a conservative campus speak up and not be afraid to defend their beliefs. Everyone should be able to do that, whether they are a conservative at a liberal school, or a liberal at a conservative school.

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