Hundreds Of Students Protest Halliburton Recruiters

MADISON, WI. (AP) – Students jammed into a University of Wisconsin-Madison building Thursday to disrupt Halliburton Co.’s attempt to recruit at a campus job fair.

Protesters angrily accused the company of profiting from the war in Iraq and sat in front of the company’s booth to discourage students from meeting with its representatives. They summoned the memory of a 1967 protest against recruiters for Dow Chemical Co., which made napalm used in Vietnam. A peaceful sit-in that ended in a bloody confrontation between students and club-wielding police officers galvanized the anti-war movement.

“Forty years ago, students stood up then and now we’re back again!” protest leader Chris Dols, 24, an engineering student, sang through a bullhorn. The crowd of nearly 200 people repeated the lyrics. “It started with Dow and continues now!” The students carried signs reading “Curly, off campus!” in reference to the Dow recruiter whose visit sparked the 1967 protest. But this time, the protesters left peacefully after 90 minutes of singing and giving speeches.

A handful of university police officers occasionally warned students to quiet down or make way for others, but there were no arrests. University rules said protesters could not chant or shout, so they sang instead. “I said, ‘From high to low, Halliburton’s got to go,”‘ the crowd sang over and over. Protesters accused Halliburton, whose former subsidiary is a major military contractor, of making billions of dollars off the Iraq war. The four Halliburton recruiters tried to ignore the noise and talked with students who were willing to endure heckling from the crowd for a chance at a job.

“How can you justify this?” David Hammond, a 37-year-old freelance writer and protester, asked a Halliburton recruiter. “On a personal level, how do you live with yourself?” The recruiter did not respond. But other students who were carrying their resumes and dressed in dress shirts and ties were clearly annoyed. Nearly 300 companies are taking part in the three-day career fair, and about 100 of them were there Thursday. “I don’t let this crap affect me,” Josh Kossel, 22, a senior mechanical engineering student, said after meeting with Halliburton representatives.

“I think protesting in general is pretty stupid.” A few minutes before the protest, doctoral student Nathaniel Fredin, 28, approached one of the Halliburton recruiters “to apologize in advance for my classmates.” “Halliburton recruiters are not responsible for U.S. policy or anything that’s going on in Iraq,” Fredin said later. “They are just trying to do their jobs.” But 21-year-old senior William Wohl, who carried a sign that read “Bucky Badger wants Halliburton off campus,” said students were making a statement.

“This is the least I can do to end the war,” he said. “It’s not much, but if everyone did the least they could do, it could make a difference.” Several recruiters from other companies complained about the protest, said Sandra Arnn, an assistant engineering dean. But she said the event went reasonably well. “It’s not an ideal setting for a career fair, but it is balancing and honoring the rights of all UW-Madison students,” she said. Houston-based Halliburton is looking for entry-level employees as part of its plan to add 13,000 workers this year.

Halliburton recruiters declined comment, referring questions to company spokeswoman Melissa Norcross. Norcross has called critics uninformed since Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR, separated earlier this year. KBR has won billions of dollars in contracts from the U.S. government to help the military in war zones. The protesters never made it to the building’s basement. If they had, they would have found recruiters for Dow Chemical Co. busy at work promoting their company to students.

By RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press Writer

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)