The Frist filibuster — a symbolic protest against the "nuclear option" sponsored by Senator Bill Frist '74 earlier this year — was named the Protest of the Year by Mother Jones Magazine, a nonprofit publication that focuses on social and political issues.
The filibuster, which started April 26 and culminated 348 hours later with a visit to Capitol Hill, took place in front of the Frist Campus Center and involved students, faculty and politicians who read aloud from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Constitution, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "My Pet Goat."
The student blog Princeton Progressive Review organized the filibuster to protest Senator Frist's "nuclear option," a proposal that threatened to ban the filibusters Democrats were using to block President Bush's court nominees. The Senate eventually preserved the judicial filibuster but only to be used "under extraordinary circumstances."
Dave Gilson, research editor of Mother Jones, said that the Frist filibuster stood out among campus protests because of its creativity.
"It seemed to have an innovative and amusing way of taking on something going on in Washington and made an impact beyond the Princeton campus," he said, citing how the protest grew to nationwide proportions and sparked similar events on 50 other college campuses.
Mother Jones has been running articles on the top 10 activist campuses since 1994.
Asheesh Siddique '07, one of the filibuster organizers, said that he thought the recognition was "great and ... unusual in terms of Princeton. Princeton isn't known to be an activist campus but this time, it stood up for something."
He said that he hoped the filibuster would become a "linchpin and inspiration for organizing more progressive events on campus," though he added that he thought the filibuster "paled in significance next to some of the other things recognized."
The magazine also declared Nate Wright, a junior at Georgetown, the Student Activist of the Year for co-founding Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND). Wright's organization, which raised relief funds for victims of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, now has 80 chapters nationwide.
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