An Open Letter from “The Disruptors”

By THE DISRUPTORS
Contributing Writers

Can parody be a political statement? Well as we believe we demonstrated two weeks ago it certainly is possible, though apparently it goes over some people’s heads.

We are the “disruptors,” the charming group of people who stood fifteen feet away from the last Save Our Saint Rose protest and chanted the Federalist Papers, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, played with a puppet and held up a clown painting; and despite what some may think, there was a method and meaning to the madness.

We’re not going to lie and say that what we did wasn’t ridiculous, we’re fully aware that it was. That was the point. It certainly wasn’t “Street Theater” nor was it “just for attention”. It was a counterpoint to Save Our Saint Roses insanity.

For months now Save Our Saint Rose has protested, argued and generally made noise about the cuts that were regrettably made last year. Including such things as creating a fake grave yard and caskets, protesting benign events and creating a separate Student Government-Esque organization (isn’t that what Student Association is for?).

You know what? Eventually people are going to get annoyed enough to say something, even if it’s not publicly. We are here to learn and grow as people, a fact that Save Our Saint Rose loves to bring up time and time again. However, that growth and learning is being impeded by a group who says they’re all for education but instead disrupts our campus and learning experience to make their point, going so far as to even protest during finals.

For example: Their last protest, the very one we showed up to, was outside an event with a speaker from Coca-Cola who was there to talk about “Women’s Leadership and Corporate Boldness” as well as have a panel discussion with executives from the Hearst corporation and President Stefanco. For many people on campus, some of us included, it sounded like a worthwhile event to go see and learn from. To Save Our Saint Rose it was something to protest because Stefanco was involved, and as we all know, Stefanco is “literally” the devil.

So we got equal parts amused and frustrated, and decided to counter protest. While some people were good natured about our counter protest, which we do appreciate, others were not so good natured. Including calling us out on some of our members wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and generalizing us all as dumb Trump supporters, despite the fact we are all rather well informed individuals and beyond that we represent almost the whole political spectrum from Socialist left to hard right. We were told our little protest was Street Theater, which is a good case of the pot calling the kettle black. We were also called “meninists” which is essentially a meaningless title that no one in our group identifies with or honestly thinks is a real word (not even Microsoft Word thinks it’s a real thing). The crowning one, though, came after the protest when, upon discussing our protest later online, someone had a knee jerk reaction to imply we were paid by the college to disrupt the protest, which if that’s the case where’s our paycheck? What’s worse than some of these dismissive opinions is the fact we had to hear about them from a third party. They, for the most part, didn’t even have the daring to speak these ideas to our faces. Many of these opinions we had to find out second hand via someone’s Facebook. If their cause is so right and they’re so sure about their opinions regarding our goals, why call us meninists and imply we’re paid off behind closed doors? Is it maybe because they’re somewhat aware of how silly some of those accusations are?

Which brings us to our next point. Some people involved with Save Our Saint Rose come off as raving Conspiracy theorists, though we will very clearly say that it’s not all of them. They go on about the Corporatization of education in the United States and how the college is going after them in every way possible to destroy their movement. An example includes last semester when, upon the student newspaper, the Chronicle, not being delivered exactly on time, they had another knee jerk reaction and started openly accusing the school of suppressing the “truth” of their message. The reality is just that sometimes papers are late. Does the movement not see how utterly nonsensical instances like this make them look?

Not to mention the assumptions that are made by the movement. They are very quick to defend the “liberal arts” education, completely ignorant of the fact that many of us on campus find liberal education requirements to be a pain more than an asset. Obviously this doesn’t speak for everyone, but even just idly sitting in a classe, one can hear how students really don’t want to take it, but need too due to school policies. Don’t speak for people who don’t even agree with you.

We understand why people are upset. Their majors, the very thing they want to do with their lives, were cut. For some, their jobs were cut, causing them to lose their lively hoods. But that does not make a good excuse for what the movement espouses and does. The sad reality that the people in those majors have to realize is that their programs were costing money while not bringing in any, and a not-for-profit business is still a business. You can’t run red numbers just because you’re not trying to make money off of your “product”. Not only that, but their majors represented a very small minority of the Saint Rose community, and, to borrow a phrase, “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few”.

The same has to be said for the unfortunate professors who are getting let go. We’ve all known people who have lost their jobs due to a company having financial issues, whether they’re friends or family. Why do the professors believe they are exempt? For people going on and on about fairness do they really believe its fair that they somehow are above financial issues unlike most of working America?

Instead of handling these issues in a mature and adult manner, Save Our Saint Rose has instead decided to actually damage our college by making us look foolish to the local area and carry on with protests and other such nonsense that they can’t seem to realize does more harm than good. It’s even driven students and teachers away who weren’t a fan of how volatile the situation was made by Save Our Saint Rose.

That’s where we come from; the ridiculousness of it all. We disagree with what Save Our Saint Rose says and how they go about making that point, and our response is to up the silliness by a level as a form of parody of that movement.

Feel free to disagree with us, feel free to judge us, but we’re more than just 5 guys with too much free time. There are others who are too afraid to speak out with us publicly for fear of reprisal, and that’s fine. We’ll speak for them too.

Save Our Saint Rose is doing more harm than good to this campus, and we’re here to bring light to that fact by being even more over the top and silly than they are, and we’re not done yet.

 

Signatories:

Theodore Stabile, Alexander Pecha, Jake Gonzales, Christina Riley, Dante Natoli, Matthew Ziesel, Brian Tomek.