New anti-war group holds 'die-in'

Members of Princeton Students United for Peace staged a die-in yesterday on the lawn in front of the Frist Campus Center to protest the war in Iraq.

Five students lay on sheets splashed with red paint, holding up signs with images of a soldier and his fiancée, a wounded Iraqi child, Arlington Cemetery and a scene of New York City meant to signify possible retaliation. They positioned themselves next to the sidewalk to be seen by passersby.

"We need to be able to have a say in what happens," said Jennifer Brea '04, the president and founder of PSUP, a new undergraduate organization formed in response to the conflict in Iraq. PSUP staged the die-in to spur discussion of the war, and the group is planning other events during the week.

There will be a second die-in at noon today in the same location, a spoken poetry event on Wednesday and a rally with student speeches on Thursday. On Friday, PSUP plans to spread a sheet on the lawn on which students can write their thoughts about the war.

"The best thing we can do is encourage debate, and encourage people to go out and make public displays about what they believe," Brea said.

PSUP plans to work with the Princeton Peace Network, which is run predominantly by graduate students, to raise money for humanitarian relief. Brea founded PSUP to build undergraduate involvement that she said was lacking in the PPN.

She said she observed that other universities, such as Harvard and Yale, were more actively protesting the war than Princeton.

"I heard a lot of impassioned arguments, but I didn't really see anything going on on-campus," Brea said. "If I'm going to sit here and have these really strong opinions, I need to get up and do something."

Brea said she hopes that PSUP will provoke response from students and campus groups.

"I feel like there should be a polemic," Brea said. "The whole idea of fighting preemptive wars and invading countries for regime changes — we need to ask ourselves if this is something we really want."

Brea added that she has been asked frequently why she is protesting now, since the war has already begun.

"We're not against the people who are fighting. I hope we can all relate to them. They're about our age," she said. "This is about Iraq, but this is also about how we want to do things in the future."

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PSUP has about 30 members and it will continue to develop programs as events progress.

"Getting out there and publicly expressing our opinions about this war, about what we think the future should look like, is important, especially when our government has not taken dissenting opinions into account," said Cara Marsh Sheffler '04, a member of PSUP.

"It's important to just make sure that those bigger questions are being asked," Brea said.