Unfortunately, Maya Rommwatt’s recent comments (“Warned for free speech,” Dec. 6) regarding what some Cal Poly students did at a recent job fair in front of a Raytheon booth reminds me of how truly confused some people are.
The article states that a group of students sat peacefully in front of a Raytheon booth during a career fair and sang “anti-war songs.” Then they did it again a few months later at another Raytheon booth.
Yeah, I get it—freedom of speech. They did it peacefully (a rare thing), so kudos to them for that. The problem is that chances are good that some engineering students chose not to go to the Raytheon booth because of the “singers.” I hope they avoided the noise and got job offers. Given the way Rommwatt feels about “evil defense contractors” and “war profiteers” like Raytheon, she really should take her argument to Cal Poly and convince them to not allow any defense contractor on campus. Take Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, and many other companies off the career day invitee list from now on—problem solved. Just ignore the fact that many Cal Poly engineering graduates wouldn’t get a job, future enrollment would drop, and our country would be less safe.
There will forever be arguments on whether we should be involved in a military conflict, although I’m sure Rommwatt would insist we should never be. War stinks, but without the strongest military in the world (defined as the U.S. military, and it needs to stay that way), other countries would start to dictate things. While our government has its problems, I sure trust them more than I do China’s, Russia’s, or many others. She may disagree given her crystal ball. Peaceful protest is always fine, but it shouldn’t stand between a soon-to-be graduate and a good employer. Cal Poly did the right thing if they stepped in and prevented future “singing.”
Mark Hontz
Raytheon retiree, Cal Poly alumnus
This article appears in Dec 20-30, 2018.
At which point along the continuum does a soldier and or employee at Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, and many other companies become responsible for facilitating and or being complicit in the slaughter millions of innocent men, women, and children as well as numerous other war crimes and crimes against humanity in wars based on lies for empire, hegemony, and corporate profit? Providing jobs is a poor metric for continuation of perpetual war. Should we allow tobacco, asbestos, and DDT manufacturers access to job fairs since they provide jobs? How about heroin, meth, and crack labs seeking engineers and chemists?
As it stands today, the US is the most violent and terrorist nation in the world whose sole rasion d’etre is in making the world safe for corrupt, crony, predatory capitalism while destroying all alternatives at every opportunity. As such, wars based on lies, invasions, assassinations, torture, death squads, mass bombing, Killer Drones, installation and support of brutal right-wing regimes etc. are all justified in facilitating this.
Long past time to reign in those who profit off of perpetual war and begin to work towards peace and a just world for all…
“Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars, now wars are manufactured to sell weapons” – Arundhati Roy
((( Raytheon )))