The second annual Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) Political Science Career Day held Tuesday, April 7 started routinely enough, yet went out with a rather loud bang. The event was an all-day affair held in Student Union room 003, otherwise known as “the fishbowl,” the glass-walled room off of the cafeteria. The specific lecture that drew protest action was the last, a three-speaker panel entitled, “Homeland Security and the Growing Professions in International Risk Management.”
The featured speakers were Cindy Hodges, a recent NEIU M.A. graduate in Political Science and current certificate student in Disaster Management at the University of North Carolina. She talked about the growing number of degrees in disaster management and homeland security. Then Brian Quirk of the U.S. Department of Energy spoke on the importance of higher education. He told his own story of growing up on Chicago’s south side, earning a degree in communications and eventually landing a job at the Energy Department during the Carter administration.
The third speaker was Officer Whyte of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection. His lecture was the main focus of the largely Latino-based protest. He also told his story, citing 19 years working in Customs, mostly on the narcotics team. He talked about the need to protect the country from narcotics and terrorism, appealing largely to people’s sense of patriotism and their duty to protect our borders.
“It is our job to protect what is ours,” Whyte said. According to Political Science major Bernard Brennan, he was a “strong speaker,” but “kind of sounded like a coach giving a pep talk.”
The panel managed to carry on, but was partially disrupted throughout by the actions of the protestors. They held up signs to the glass and chanted loudly enough for the noise to penetrate the room, drowning out some of the speakers. Students from Coalition United For Free Speech (CUFFS), the Socialist Club, Students Against War and a coalition of various Hispanic student groups all turned out to demonstrate. The police were also present, but due to the excitement and anger in the crowd, their calls for students to tone down their volume were repeatedly ignored.
Protest signs included words like “racist” and “hate,” and slogans such as “money for schools, not border patrol,” and “no human being is illegal.” Slogans like “Education, not deportation,” and “Yes we can” in Spanish could be heard through the glass. Several of the bystanders interviewed commented that the demonstration seemed to be missing the point of the lectures.
When asked for comments about the demonstration, the protestors complained that an agency charged with stopping the flow of Latinos across the border was recruiting at an institution that has a Hispanic population of 28 percent. “We believe in funding for education, not increased border security,” said Jorge Ortiz, one of the protesters. Ortiz also cited the ongoing “Free Speech Zone” controversy, saying that they were there “to exercise their right to free speech.”
The protest ended when the lecture concluded, with Whyte being escorted out of the cafeteria in the company of campus police officers.