This past Thursday, October 7th, YAL @ St. Cloud State University held a petition rally to bring awareness on campus about the nine year anniversary of the "war" in Afghanistan. After it was all said and done we collected 450 petition signatures (makes for a great email list).  

As you'll notice in the photos, we were able to get a film student (a friend who happens to be sympathetic to YAL) to rent out a camera and take some footage of the event. The video should be edited within the week or two. In the video we ask a few students who signed our petitions how they think America should go about ending the war. It was interesting:  Often students wouldn't really take a side either way, often saying something like, "Yeah, I think we should end the war, but I don't think we can just get up and leave yet."

I think this is a sad yet perfect commentary on today's college students and their view on our perpetual wars.  There's no draft, so unless they have a close family or friends in the military they aren't personally affected by the war at all. They take the easy route and come down on both sides of the issue. It's this mentality that it makes it so vital to get students engaged and thinking about this issue. Maybe by the next time you talk to them they'll have an opinion of their own.