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ACLU "not amused" by Fletcher School's Waterboarding Club
Club founders claim to be
inspired by a shared love of water and flat pieces of wood
MEDFORD – When a pair of Security Studies
students decided to start a club promoting their favorite sports, they never
dreamed it would bring upon the wrath of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We were just going to call it the ‘surfing club’ but thought we would get into
trouble for excluding body boarders, wake boarders, and others,” explained Jeff
Schneider (MALD 2011). “People at this school get all worked up by ‘names’ and
‘words’. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Should we have called it
the ‘Wet Sports Club?’ Some people at Fletcher are a bit immature, and that
sounds kind of gross.”
However Schneider was met with resistance at the then-unnamed club’s first
meeting from other students who prefer “other water-based athletic pursuits
involving flat, board-like objects,” according to a statement from his lawyer.
Trouble began when the Waterboarding Club held a fundraiser in November 2009.
Matt Herbert (MALD 2010), a founding member of the club, said that in
retrospect, “we just should never have allowed the ACLU on campus when we had
the Waterboarding Club Wet T-shirts for Charity Contest, co- Sponsored by
Fletcher Women in International Security.” Herbert cited the contest as a cause
of widespread Socialist outrage, as it involved forcibly dousing female students
in water.
Jennifer Greenberg, an attorney with the ACLU of Massachusetts explained her
organization’s objection. “We are not amused by the decision of these students
to make light of the terrible acts of torture and physical degradation
undertaken in the name of the US ‘War on Terror.’ As students of International
Security, they should be all the more aware of the hideous legacy of
waterboarding. Also, I cannot imagine where in Boston you could possibly surf,
or do any of those other things, for that matter.”
Schneider dismissed these concerns. “Americans have a long history of combining
boards with water, and as usual the ACLU is infringing on that.”
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