Puerto Rican Students Invade Library
to Protest ROTC
Some 300 students at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras Campus in San Juan staged a brief demonstration in the university library September 1 to protest Reserve Officers Training Corps recruitment on campus and demand that the U.S. Marines abandon a controversial training ground on the outlying island of Vieques. The protestors spent about 15 minutes in the reference section to chant their messages before moving on the ROTC building.
Myrna Torres, the library’s acting associate director, told American Libraries she believed the protesters stopped in the library because “there are always so many students around that it’s an important place to get their message out, to make other students conscious of it.”
“In the past, the library was considered a sacred place where no one dared to protest out loud,” Torres observed. Now, it’s the place “to get other students to join in.” She noted that the university administration has adopted a policy of “no confrontation” toward such student protests over the past two to three years.
Posted September 6, 1999.
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