Viewpoint Fordham seniors will dance on war ship; pacifists cry
foul
By JOHN DEAR
Jesuit Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, president of the Jesuit university
in El Salvador, told me four years before he and his colleagues were
assassinated that the purpose of a Jesuit university is to promote God's reign
of peace and justice, but to do that it must denounce the anti-reign of war and
injustice. At Jesuit-run Fordham University in the Bronx, where I have been
teaching this past semester, the goal is much lower -- and apparently the
students have learned the lesson.
Fordham's senior class has chosen to hold its Senior Ball May 14
on board the USS Intrepid, a carrier-turned-museum filled with bombs and
bombers, docked in the Hudson River just off Manhattan's 42nd Street. Their
decision and the largely silent support of the faculty, administration and
Jesuit community offer a strong symbol of the times.
A propaganda arm of the Pentagon, the Intrepid War Museum complex
proudly displays nuclear missiles, attack and bomber jets, and a destroyer that
shelled Vietnamese villages during the Vietnam war. It also proudly exhibits
U.S. weapons used to bomb hundreds of thousands of human beings to death during
the Gulf War. Its sole purpose is to glorify war.
The Intrepid exhibits an A-4 Skyhawk, a fighter jet used by the
Kuwaiti military that killed many people during the Gulf War; a Tomahawk cruise
missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons; the USS Growler submarine, one of
the first ships to carry nuclear weapons; and in the plaza, an Army M-42
self-propelled antiaircraft artillery vehicle and M-60 Patton tank. During the
Vietnam war, planes from the USS Intrepid dropped thousands of tons of bombs on
the people of Vietnam and Laos.
Throughout its 15-year existence, the Intrepid War Museum has
received millions of dollars in government subsidies, including hundreds of
thousands of dollars from the financially strapped Board of Education, and $4.5
million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, funds needed
for low-income housing for the poor, were used to renovate the pier where the
Intrepid is berthed.
As one of the Fordham students on the Senior Week planning
committee recently admitted, the Intrepid is "a symbol of killing and
death."
Yet instead of calling for its closure, the seniors plan to dance
around the weapons. The scene conjures up biblical images of dancing and
playing around the golden calf.
Why have Fordham seniors chosen to party at this symbol of
destruction? The nine members of the Senior Week Committee acknowledge they
never once considered the nature of the Intrepid Museum before they deposited
$25,000 for the party. They were merely excited about dancing on a ship. In the
last few weeks, heated editorials in the student newspaper and a furious
discussion at an open dialogue session have shed new light on the upcoming
event. Still, most seniors and faculty members believe it's only a party and
not worth getting upset about.
Every Good Friday for the last 15 years, thousands of Pax Christi
members have marched along 42nd Street to pray and protest the ongoing
sufferings of Christ as he dies in today's wars and violence. These modern day
Stations of the Cross end at the Intrepid, where some of us commit civil
disobedience calling for its closure. This year, over 1,500 marched and 32 were
arrested, including Jesuit Frs. Dan Berrigan and Ned Murphy, Fordham philosophy
professor Jim Marsh, several Fordham graduate and undergraduate students and
myself.
Most Jesuits, faculty and students, see no problem with a party at
the pro-war museum. As one Jesuit theologian at Fordham put it, "We're all
Niebuhrians here. Coercion and war are necessary and justifiable. Jesus' ethic
can't be applied socially. He never meant it to be. So what's wrong with a
party on the Intrepid?"
"My most stressful moral investigation concerning the ball is
deciding on a dress," one Fordham senior wrote. "Does this make me shallow? No,
just able to have a good time."
With the ROTC training students on campus to carry weapons and
kill, it's easy to see why so few would care about a Senior Ball on the
Intrepid. In such an environment, the Jesuit vision of "the faith that does
justice" and the gospel command to "love your enemies" are easily
dismissed.
A few lone voices continue to raise questions. "I hope that future
Senior Committees realize that many students at Fordham have problems with
death, torture and destruction in the name of military action," senior Eric
Montroy wrote in the student newspaper.
"I am deeply offended, intellectually, aesthetically, morally,
politically and religiously by the Senior Class' decision to hold its Senior
Ball on the Intrepid, ship of death, symbol of empire and celebration of all
that is most evil in the U.S. military industrial complex," Professor Jim Marsh
wrote.
In the end, the seniors' selection shows not just bad taste or
moral blindness, but the university's failure to educate its students in the
Jesuit/Christian vision. Some Fordham undergrads now speak of holding every
Senior Ball for years to come on the Intrepid.
Meanwhile, others plan to hold a vigil and carry banners on the
night of the ball calling for the museum's closing, an end to war and pursuit
of gospel nonviolence.
One can only ponder what the martyred Ellacuria would say. Not to
mention Jesus.
Jesuit Fr. John Dear is author of Peace Behind Bars
(Sheed & Ward). He will move this summer to Belfast for his Jesuit
tertianship year.
National Catholic Reporter, May 2, 1997
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