It’s that time of the year again – when the days get warmer, the grass gets greener, plants start to sprout and the ducks fornicate in the bushes outside of the Student Union. This month also welcomed another unusual commotion on the steps of the Student Union: students holding picket signs, chanting, marching and screaming into megaphones. This surely was a revolution in the making, right?

On March 4, there was quite a hullabaloo on the University of Massachusetts campus as well as many other college campuses across the nation. The message of the demonstration on the UMass campus, however, was not exactly clear. I blame part of this on the fact that while rallying support on the Student Union steps, there were three people with megaphones chanting three different things.

I got confused within the chaos of young radicals and the cluster of college ideologies and decided to chant my own demands, which were for more options of dried fruits in the dining commons on campus. This, much like the rest of the protest, went completely unacknowledged and was purposely ignored.

The day of action was just one example of how far and how obnoxious campus political groups have gotten. After the hundreds of flyers littering campus bulletins, dozens of Facebook groups, events and fan pages, rallies, open mic nights and guest speakers, I have started actively avoiding and ignoring any form of political activity on campus. I don’t actually see much of a difference between the bombardment from these activists and those nuts that stop by every once in a while toting the giant Jesus banner.

If you are one of the people who organize these information sessions and benefit concerts, you should take note of how many people actually show up or care. If the 100 flyers you printed to advertise your recycling awareness concert were not buried by the 20 other flyers for free yoga classes, then people may have noticed. If no one shows up to your benefit concert, it could also be because no one wants to see your best friend’s roommate’s screamo duo. If at the end of your event, you count the money raised at the door and realize you’ve raised nothing, you can blame Tix Unlimited for pocketing the money and petition that they be shut down at your next rally.

It’s not just the amount of e-mails I receive or the flyers I see floating in the campus pond. It’s also the actions of these individuals that confuse me, and cause me to question the amount of research done before stepping up on that soap box.

Now, before you start a petition to have me expelled from school, let me just set some things straight. I’m not calling these campus radicals stupid. They clearly have studied on Wikipedia the subjects of anarchism, hegemony and socialism. But I do find it funny that a student born and educated in a capitalist society would suggest that we’d all be better off in some type of Marxist society.

While walking to class the other day, I witnessed an act of nature taking place as three male ducks struggled to mount a female duck in an attempt to procreate. A scene placed anywhere else but the wilderness would be considered a gang bang, but this was nature and a natural part of wildlife. To another student in the area, this scene was not a part of nature, but representative of the oppressiveness of male ducks, and this radical took action, chasing away these male ducks in a stand for feminism, defending a helpless duck and preventing any future family of ducklings.

Great work.

I’m truly concerned for the future of this country when I look at those who feel they are fit to take leadership.

As unorganized as March 4 day of action was for the UMass campus, other campuses around the country also showed promise for the future leaders of America.

Students from University of California Berkley chose to take their protests even further by marching onto Interstate 880. They blockaded the freeway, creating a gridlock of cars that backed up traffic for two hours, while these student radicals danced and shouted in protest to the increase of student fees. Let me just reiterate this. Students shut down a freeway, preventing cars and emergency vehicles from using I-880, and they did this because they were unhappy about paying more to go to school. How unbelievably selfish.

The real doozey in this story though is that when Oakland riot police arrived to disperse the crowd from the freeway, a fifteen-year-old high school student, Francois Zimany, fell off the freeway falling 30 feet, fracturing his skull and causing memory loss. Paramedics could have gotten Zimany to the hospital quickly, but there was one major problem: all the roads were backed up due to the protest.

I know I will get a lot of flak for saying this, but to be completely honest, I have lost sympathy for most political groups on campus. I hate to say I’ve lost respect for the liberals and radicals on campus who showed up to Don Feder’s speech just to not let him speak. These kinds of acts would have Abbie Hoffman turning in his grave. I’m not becoming a Republican – believe me, I think they’re just as ridiculous.

I’m just concerned. I’m concerned for the future of this country, and I’m concerned for the future of all ducks.

Ben Sullivan is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].