Letters: Indiana University arrests

'Not at IU, not anywhere'

Indiana University is my alma mater. I am horrified by IU officials' discarding the 1969 policy protecting free speech in Dunn Meadow. With arrests mounting and snipers on the IMU roof, I read what Union Theological Seminary's president recently wrote while sirens blared past her window and NYC police flooded the Columbia campus across the street. President Serene Jones wrote: "We ... will never take the actions that occurred today [at Columbia]. ... [A]ll of your voices are too important ... to shove them away.... [C]ampuses need to be places where lively, rigorous debate happens, where we struggle together to find better ways to live together ... and where students have the chance to find and strengthen their voices, experience the power of collective action, and learn to be passionate, engaged citizens." I am a survivor of the May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard shooting at Kent State University. When I hear a call for armed law enforcement to limit student protest, I cringe. I think of all schools where peaceful protestors are met with armed force and official ignorance of the meaning and value of the First Amendment. I pray there will not be another Kent State — not there, not at IU, not anywhere.

Barbara Child, Bloomington