Critical Thinking University. Social Justice University. Sex and Alcohol University.

That’s what Dr. Lorenz suggested Loyola put on their sweatshirts in the May 6, 2005 edition of The Maroon. Then, two weeks ago, he called out Loyola students to protest in the Peace Quad against the Iraq war.

A lot of what Dr. Lorenz said is factual:

Loyola students pre-game. Loyola students go to bars. Loyola students miss classes because they get too “shit-faced” the night before. Some Loyola students even have “promiscuous sex.”

But are all of these problems just limited to Loyola? Doesn’t this happen at most universities and colleges throughout the country?

OK, so maybe Loyola – which cracked Princeton Review’s list of Top Ten Party Schools in the country – is full of students who like to have a good time. But is that really the reason why we don’t protest the Iraq war in our Peace Quad?

Protest is a radical new-style strategy in which a group tries to be heard by a target group. Protest works by gaining the public’s attention, which in turn, pressures the target group (in this case, the Bush administration) to make a change.

A protest on Loyola’s campus would not gain much media attention at all. Therefore, the only way to truly protest against the war is to form a coalition of universities in New Orleans, and beyond, and protest somewhere downtown.

But a coalition like that in the near future seems highly unlikely. Our generation doesn’t have much incentive to protest, as people did 40 years ago. There’s no longer a draft, like in the 1960s, when 18-year-olds were forced to serve their country. Instead, we have men and women who choose to join the armed forces and protect our country.

Dr. Lorenz also says that Loyola’s silent Peace Quad may be interpreted by the Bush administration as our approval of the war. The president’s approval ratings hit an all-time low of 36 percent last month; I hardly think that the president goes to bed each night believing he has acceptance from the American public.

Even if we did protest, why exactly would a second-term president care what a bunch of non-voting students from a liberal-arts university think about his party’s foreign policy? We had only a 40 percent turnout in our own SGA elections … and those voting booths were in the Danna Center.

I know it irritates Dr. Lorenz that the Loyola student body is presumably all about sex and alcohol. But he shouldn’t be so judgmental of our generation.

Chris walsh is a political science junior from Braintree, Mass.