David Green says Block-I students should be ashamed of their militaristic display and that athletic planners shouldn’t exploit football games for political purposes. I think Green needs to return to reality.

Is he aware that the Morrill Act of 1862 granted federal land for public universities like Illinois to teach agricultural and mechanical arts “including military tactic”? Green was likely aware that he was in Memorial Stadium (though that may be giving him too much credit). But did he know that the stadium is so named because it memorializes the Illinois veterans who gave their lives in World War I and II, or that the moniker “Fighting Illini” is a reference to those Illinois veterans of World War I?

What Green seems to forget, what most veterans — and I’d like to think those Block-I students — know, is that everyone in the stadium that day was “privileged” because of the sacrifices of men and women who paid the ultimate price for love of their country. Green should be ashamed that he painted such patriots as “poverty-drafted,” as if they fought not by choice, but from lack of economic opportunities. Those patriots died because they loved their country, and so we can proudly chant, “USA, USA!” All the more appropriate in a stadium that recognizes their sacrifice.

As John Stuart Mill wrote in 1862, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.

The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.” If Green’s idea of patriotism means nothing is worth fighting for, he probably shouldn’t return to Memorial Stadium. After all, it simply enshrines a history of “state-sponsored killing.” In fact, if I were David Green, I’d stay as far away from Block-I as I could.

Chad Garland

senior in LAS and President of Illini Veterans Student Organization