Supreme Court chief draws protests at Middlebury College
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. --Student protesters dressed as prisoners from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay demonstrated Tuesday outside a college chapel where U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was to speak, chanting about reproductive rights, U.S detainees and a variety of other topics.
About 15 demonstrators stood in a steady drizzle as hundreds of their Middlebury College classmates filed into Mead Memorial Chapel to hear Roberts, most ignoring the protesters as they shuffled into the building.
Four wore mock prison garb. Two were in bare feet, standing silently on wooden crates, wearing ragged-edged black smocks, with black hoods over their heads and wires coming off their hands, posed like the prisoners pictured in photographs from the Iraq prison where United States forces allegedly tortured inmates in 2003.
Two others wore orange jail-type pants, attempting to look like detainees at U.S. prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"This is not a Halloween costume," read the cardboard sign that hung from one's neck. "Where are the ghost detainees now?"
As they stood silently, another protester led others in call-and-response chants, calling out "Our bodies, our choices, Justice Roberts, hear our voices" and other sing-song rhymes -- some dealing with "oil wars," some "resegregation."
"We're not protesting against Roberts," said Mike Ives, 22, a senior from Larchmont, N.Y., speaking through his hood. "We're demonstrating about issues we care about and that he has enormous sway over."
The protest remained peaceful, with uniformed campus security officers standing by and College officials watching from nearby.
"It's the nature of an academic institution," said Michael McKenna, vice president of communications for Middlebury College, raising his voice in an interview to be heard over the chants. "It's part of our tradition to bring in speakers of all backgrounds and encourage diversity. This is in the best tradition of American higher education.
Roberts was to use a separate entrance, away from the protesters, according to campus security director Lisa Boudah.
Hundreds of students waited in the rain for the doors to open, and few seemed to give the protesters a second thought.
"I don't really see how Roberts has anything to do with the things they're talking about, himself," said Sean Meaney, 20, a junior from Norwalk, Conn. "I'd be happier if they weren't there. We should show Roberts respect. He's not a political figure."
Roberts, who became the court's chief justice last year, was to deliver the 2006 John Hamilton Fulton Lecture in the Liberal Arts to about 750 people at Mead Chapel, while about 800 more were expected at a pair of satellite locations where his address was to be carried via closed-circuit television.
He was to take questions from audience members afterward.
The demonstrations were organized by a coalition of student groups that see him as a "potential threat" to reproductive rights, the environment and racial equality, the groups said.
