I’ve always been a supporter of the September 29th Movement.

Although I haven’t been able to resolve the question of whether the name of Catt Hall should be changed, the students who have been advocating the change seem to have a legitimate complaint.

But lately, the antics of the September 29th Movement have become irritating and tiresome. What started as a campaign to right what the members of the group felt was a wrong has become a campaign of self-serving antagonism.

Instead of working with the university administration, The Movement is trying to embarrass it. In the process, the members are embarrassing themselves and are certainly not making any progress toward the renaming of Catt Hall.

The turn away from the original intent of the Movement seemed to begin in November with the infamous “town meeting” in Beardshear Hall.

“Town meeting” was the term used by the Movement. A curious choice of words. A town meeting is usually defined as members of a community getting together to discuss an issue. What took place in Beardshear Hall was a protest, so let’s just call it what it was.

The Movement seems to enjoy invoking phrases from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. For example, they like to call the Beardshear Hall protest “civil disobedience,” a term usually defined as the intentional violation of a law you believe to be unjust. People who used civil disobedience in the 1950s and ’60s went to jail by the hundreds, and they accepted it as part of their role in a movement to change things.

In the ISU version of civil disobedience, the participants get referred to the university judiciary committee and are outraged by the possibility of being punished.

In the Daily story about the protest, Milton McGriff said Movement members, “have exhausted everything in the system and are willing to face whatever penalties,” that resulted from the protest.

In the Dec. 12 Daily, it was reported that the Movement had hired a noted civil rights attorney to help them beat the charges. McGriff called the charge of holding an unauthorized rally “bogus.”

The Movement held rallies and meetings with the administration for months before the November protest in Beardshear Hall. No one was ever charged with anything.

By having the protest in Beardshear Hall when the administration told them not to, they were daring the university to punish them. Then they not only tried to weasel out of the charges for rules they had intentionally broken, they had the nerve to act surprised when they were punished.

To be fair, the university is at fault here, too. It appears that the leaders of the Movement were told that they would receive a slap on the wrist for their involvement in the protest, when in fact, they received a hard slap on the wrist.

When the university decided that the hearings for the eight students charged would be held in private, the Movement screamed that they were being censured. More likely, the university didn’t want the hearings to become a circus of protesters, which is very likely what they would have been.

The Daily had staked out it’s position on the side of the Movement and has held firm. In news stories, we refer to the November protest as a “town meeting” because that’s what the Movement calls it. We refer to the eight students charged for the protest as the Beardshear Eight because that’s what they want to be called. A news editor told me the name is a derivative of the Chicago Eight, who were singled out to be tried for the riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Bobby Seale, a member of the Chicago Eight, did not gag himself, as members of the Movement did at a speech given by President Martin Jischke. He was actually bound and gagged at his own trial. The two things do not compare.

In a letter to the editor after the punishments were announced, Meron Wondwosen made references to civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 60s being sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by dogs.

Let’s try to keep a little perspective here. In the 1950s and 60s, civil rights protesters were not told they couldn’t hold a position in a university group. They were beaten, hosed, imprisoned and murdered. The two things don’t compare.

By making themselves out as martyrs and trying to embarrass Jischke, the members of the Movement are making it less likely that Jischke will ever agree to change the name of that building. They are hurting what was supposed to be the purpose behind the movement.

If they really want that change to be made, they should accept their punishment and get back to the original intent.

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Steven Martens is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Cedar Rapids.