Hamline University students apply for peace

Students on many campuses have been forming anti-war groups this fall, but students at Hamline University took things a step further when they authored a resolution opposing a U.S. unilateral military strike against Iraq. \nHamline's student congress passed the resolution earlier this month.\nStudents FOR Peace, affiliated with the interfaith peace organization Fellowship of Reconciliation, drafted the resolution and brought it before the student congress.\n"We wanted to start a conversation about Iraq on campus because we were disturbed by the lack of discussion about it in our classes and among students," said Hamline undergraduate Laura Wilson. "We wanted to make a statement with an institutional voice to make a bigger impact."\nThe resolution was drafted in alignment with the school's mission, said Students FOR Peace member Colin Schumacher. The mission states, "The College of Liberal Arts at Hamline University is dedicated to preparing compassionate citizens of the world … in order to increase justice, opportunity, and freedom."\n"When you go to a university, you adhere to the mission because that is how your education is going to be guided," Schumacher said, and he relates compassion to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.\n"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant … responsible for many human-rights violations," he said. "The question is, what are we, as taxpayers in the U.S., willing to sponsor?\nSchumacher attributes his interest in social justice to his mom, who teaches kindergarten and volunteers; and to his dad, who works with the hearing impaired as a counselor for Wisconsin's Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. \n"I really respect him for being a part of that," he said. \nSchumacher also recalled a high school social justice class in which learning about Martin Luther King, Gandhi's theory on nonviolence and liberation theology were defining moments for him.