In an act of true dedication, Jocelyn Boryczka, politics professor and the new director of the peace and justice studies program, is organizing a trip to a war protest in New York City on Oct. 27.
Boryczka has wanted to share her strong sense of political activisim and give the opportunity to students outside her classroom since she came to Fairfield in 2002.
Now, she has the power to inspire new efforts on campus. With the help of a program steering committee, made up of faculty, students and community members, she plans to focus these awareness efforts on the Iraq War.
“The steering committee got together over the summer and we were thinking of what we should be focusing on during the year,” said Boryczka. “There were so many great ideas, and then we realized that we weren’t even talking about the Iraq War.”
The first priority was to start off the year with a big message, and Boryczka thought the multi-city war protest would be a perfect opportunity for Fairfield students to become active.
Boryczka has been an avid supporter of protesting various causes, regardless of the consequences.
“I have been arrested for protesting and of course, there were the deaths at Kent State University,” she said. “However, most of the time we can peacefully protest. We have to maintain that right by exercising that right.”
To Boryczka, protests are most important because they get people to think about the issues.
“In this planning, I have had more conversations about the war in the last couple of weeks than I’ve had in months. It makes people think about the complex realities,” she said.
Boryczka notes how she has observed a noticeable change in the interest of the Iraq War on campus in recent years.
“So far, we have people on campus who are working on a range of issues form AIDS to the environment to Darfur, but we don’t have any program focusing on the Iraq War, which influences all the other issues,” she said. “This war is going to define this generation of students, just like Vietnam War did with the baby-boomers. I don’t think we fully understand the implications of this.”
It’s not as though the Iraq War was always a secondary issue on campus, however.
Boryczka views these events as crucial developmental processes for participating students.
“We kicked out the Republican Congress, but our Democratic Congress is stalemated. The way we continue to exercise push is do events like this. We want the students to take what they’ve learned and bring them to their own communities as well, away from campus.”
Boryczka explained how the planning of the event has really been a group effort.
“A number of people have come together from the politics department, the history department, Students for Social Justice, Campus Ministry, College Democrats, Alliance, FUSA and Pax Christie, an organization in the community that promotes the peace agenda of the Catholic Church. We’re all coordinating efforts so we can go to New York together.”
The war protest will be the first of many organized events intended to initiate more of these conversations. The events will continue until next year when the 2008 election is held. However, Boryczka hopes that the activism will do more than lead students and community members to voting booths.
“I’ve been an activist for a very long time and for me, getting political goes beyond getting out the vote. Politics in a democratic country should also be about people reclaiming the streets that are theirs. The way that we protect our freedoms of speech and assembly is by using them,” she said.
Cecelia Bucki, a history professor at Fairfield, is also involved in the planning of the event. She is impressed by how the event has been organized.
“We have come together most recently to plan our campus’s participation. Many campus groups are involved in this, not just Students for Social Justice.”
“We think that the war in Iraq is such a crucial piece of any campaign to win social justice here in the U.S., as well as the bloodshed in Iraq, that we are making it the focus,” said Bucki.
“There is a bunch of students that are helping. Now it’s just a matter of getting the information out there,” said Kathryn Barry ’08, a student planner of the event. “Boryczka has really been a great leader for all the volunteering student organizers. There has really been a great response and we’re really hoping that people will come to the protest for more than just the sake of it.”
“Boryczka is amazing and forces you to be engaged,” said Julie Ruggieri ’10, who is enrolled in two of Boryczka’s courses this semester. “We are assigned to do service learning projects for class. She is fair and flexible and I really enjor her style of teaching.”
Planning events such as these is really important to Boryczka.
“For me, it’s a kind of organic development,” she said. “This is only part one, to be continued.”
Click to read more about the national protests planned for Oct 27
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