Police Brutality, Vegetarianism, and the ROTC

The quick and dirty about what's been going on around the Ancient Eight (and some other schools too).

Early Saturday morning, about a dozen New Haven police officers stormed into a downtown New Haven nightclub where Yale’s Morse-Ezra Stiles College “screw” was held. Five students were arrested, and one sophomore was apparently Tasered.

The Yale Daily News, which broke the story, has reported that students have accused the New Haven officers of police brutality. From the YDN’s coverage, it seems that officials from both Morse and Stiles colleges are in the process of investigating what happened to their students, and a New Haven city hall spokeswoman said that the city will investigate any complaints of police brutality. In the meantime, you can watch this video of the raid.

Earlier this week, Princeton’s Whig-Cliosophic Society sponsored a debate about the ethics of meat eating that ended with a 75-35 vote against eating meat on any ethical grounds. Bruce Friedrich, PETA’s vice president for policy and government affairs—the same guy who allegedly streaked at a 2001 meeting of George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II with the words “go vegan” painted on his body—was in full form. From the Daily Princetonian: “If you believe unnecessary waste is unethical, adding to global poverty is unethical and causing cruelty to animals is unethical ... in order to align your ethics with your actions you should be choosing a vegetarian diet,” Friedrich said.

ROTC has generated a surprising amount of student support at Stanford. After the Stanford Review, the campus’s conservative weekly newsmagazine, voiced its support for the issue over the past few months, the Stanford Daily joined the Review’s bandwagon with an editorial that argued that “we as a society must hold our armed forces in the highest esteem” and it’s time “for Stanford to do the right thing and send the right message by allowing the ROTC back on campus.”