Occupy IU participates in ‘Spring Awakening’ noise demonstration

Students have barely heard from local Occupy groups for months. That changed Wednesday with a protest that wound around Ballantine Hall, through the Sample Gates and down 10th Street.

It wasn’t strictly an Occupy IU protest, but the group was among the organizers for “Spring Awakening: A Mobile Noise Demonstration,” which attendees formed to protest “tuition increases, University privatization and campus apathy,” according to the event’s Facebook page.

Fourteen people arrived at 12:20 p.m. at the red clock between Woodburn Hall and Ballantine Hall to distribute hand-painted signs. Some were cardboard, painted with messages such as “No campus cops.” Others were thicker plastic, painted to look like commonly banned books, such as “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Ulysses.”

One man carted a speaker in a blue wheelbarrow to blast songs with heavy
bass lines.

People slowly trickled in, bringing ukuleles, guitars and drums.

About 30 people were gathered around the red clock by the 12:30 p.m. start time. They milled about, deciding how to start.

One man stepped out from the crowd, addressing students on the sidewalk.
“School costs too much!”

His friends behind him laughed, and he turned to them. “Is that even controversial?”

He tried again, taking a different tack. “Tuition is too low! Let’s go invade other
countries!”

A girl clad in pink plaid played a trumpet fanfare to quiet the group, which hovered at about 40 people. She climbed on a low stone wall, and someone handed her a megaphone.

“What is the public?” senior Karissa McKelvey began.

McKelvey talked about IU President Michael McRobbie’s 12-percent pay increase from the 2010-11 to the 2011-12 school year. She discussed the 5.5-percent tuition increase for the same year. She belabored the pay cuts University employees experienced.

Students walking down North Forest Avenue toward Ballantine stopped to listen as she finished with a demand to the IU trustees, the state and the country to give citizens free education.

The crowd joined her, chanting “free education” amid music from the various instruments and squeals from the noisemakers.

The tour of campus began from there. The protestors walked to Beck Chapel and looped between Wylie Hall and the Chemistry Building, finally stopping to regroup in the plaza between Ballantine and Jordan Hall.

“Let’s go through Ballantine!” someone shouted, spawning a debate. They wanted to reach the students and faculty in the building, but they knew IU police were aware of their presence on campus, and that wasn’t the type of attention they wanted.

The need to reach students won out. The protestors decided to whisper rather than shout chants inside, but they stomped loudly as they passed full classrooms.

They started in the back of the building, and classes quickly became alerted to their presence. Students peered out of classrooms. Some smiled, some chuckled. Many shook their heads and turned away.

“They say cuts, we say fight. Education is our right!” the group chanted.
They were about to exit the building near Beck Chapel, but someone saw a police car, and they turned back inside. They found an exit in the smaller of Ballantine’s two parking garages, and they cheered once they were out.

The group, now more than 40 students and residents, took a path across Jordan River and turned left at Woodburn Hall, headed for Showalter Fountain. There, McKelvey reminded participants it was lunch time for people in the dorms. They headed to Wright Quad, blocking Seventh Street and Jordan Avenue.

Every person in the dining hall looked up as the group crashed past tables and napkin holders, shouting the need for free education.

The group left Wright and headed down 10th Street, blocking the eastbound lane in front of the Kelley School of Business. Protesters laughed and danced as drivers in the cars behind them threw their hands up in frustration.

The group blocked Woodlawn Avenue on the northbound side as it targeted Collins Living-Learning Center. Protesters marched into Edmondson Hall, which contains the food court, and planted themselves between tables half-filled with diners.

“They say cuts. We say fight!”

Staff in Collins made the group leave, but the protesters weren’t done with Collins.
Kelly Thomas, a doctoral candidate, gave a speech as one protestor, an alumnus who refused to give his name, took down the American and Indiana flags that had flown in the Collins courtyard. A group of Collins residents gathered around him to ask him to stop,  but he did not.

“Protests are fine as long as they’re respectful,” said Kevin Tanner, a sophomore and Collins resident. “I even agree with the message. But this isn’t respectful.”

Thomas, meanwhile, talked about the purpose of schooling in the United States.She called it training for the capitalist rat race.

The group withdrew, moving south down Woodlawn Avenue, again blocking northbound traffic. Protesters walked through Dunn Meadow to the Sample Gates, and as the people carrying signs painted to look like books formed a line, one protestor yelled, “You are being robbed! Your education will not equal a job, and it should not equal a job. Your education should be for you, not them!”

They headed back to the Indiana Memorial Union and marched inside, shouting and stomping — though they were quiet as they crept through the sleeping room. They headed out and downstairs to Dunn Meadow, the last stop after a long, tiring and emotional protest.

“I’d say that was a success!” someone identified as Con Rail on Facebook wrote on the event wall at about 3:53 p.m. “Good work everybody; way to tear it up like gangstas.”