Protest breaks the camel's back

By: Matt Wovrosh

Posted: 11/19/09

It seems a desperate portion of Capital students have assembled just outside the MDR, brandishing pitchforks and torches, desperate for blood. Trayless Tuesday is just the last straw.

It seems that this inconvenience is just too much to bear--it is truly the tray that broke the camel's back. It is interesting to me that

some people seem to have decided that this issue is worth protesting.

I say to myself, "Is this all that we have the strength to protest?" Tell us of great oppressions, narratives of preventable systemically manufactured catastrophes, and we shrug it off.

But an assault on our convenience-inspired habit? Well, that is out of the question. These swine can take my tray from my cold, dead, and American fingers.

I'm not even going to get into the possible conservation benefits of Trayless Tuesday, because I am sure that you have heard them and scoffed. The facts simply don't matter to some of us. What does matter is that we have to CHANGE something that until presently has never even had to be thought about or justified.

In fact, I haven't heard anybody attempt to justify having trays in the first place; at least, not any argument that does not center around their personal crucified convenience. Is there any argument of how keeping trays around is beneficial?

I would think that from some of the comments I have heard, people pay tuition to come here and use trays, not get an education.

My issue lies not exclusively with the situation of Trayless Tuesday, but with why we are so quick to take up arms over what obviously stings some the most.

This pinch of inconvenience stirs up more of a riot on campus than racial inequality, an act of censorship, or elected officials lying to us. Of course, we have been convinced that these things are the norm, but inconvenience is not.

Convenience typifies a large part of "The American Dream," while we have learned from within, perhaps even in part due to, our convenience that the rest of these injustices are acceptable because that's "just the way things are."

By Matt Wovrosh
Senior
mwovrosh@capital.edu