The Lincoln Hall Project « College of Liberal Arts & Sciences « University of Illinois

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Ceasar Perez (AB ’06, speech communications) describes his encounter with anti-war protesters on the Quad.

And I was coming out of class one day, out of FLB. I had a Spanish class. And I looked down at the Quad, and I see this crowd. And they were making some noise. But then I saw a flag, an American flag, hung upside down with a peace symbol spray-painted on it. And I got livid. You don’t do that to the flag, number one.

And now I’m realizing that it’s an anti-war protest. And I’m just seething. And I’m just: “Calm yourself down. Calm yourself down. You just got here. Don’t do this. Don’t get in trouble. You gotta calm yourself down.”

So I go all the way over to the Union, and I’m outside of the Union, and they’re talking about all this anti-war stuff. And I couldn’t help myself. And I screamed: “What about the U.S.S. Cole? What about Africa? And what about the twin towers! Both times!” There must have been 250 people. And it was amazing. You just saw all of them—shwooh—turn to me.

And I started getting into a verbal altercation—in terms of just arguing—with the entire protest. All by myself. Which really kind of bothered me because I’m like: “How can I be the only person that doesn’t agree with what they’re doing right now. This is insane.” And the security kid is looking at me, going: “Sir, please don’t yell. There’s no reason to scream.” I said: “No, no, no, no. I’ve got a right to be here. I’ve got a right to yell. They’re yelling, I’m yelling, we’re all yelling. That’s all there is to it. I have every right to be here, just like they do.”

And people are just screaming at me. I was like: “How can you forget what’s happened.” But the bottom line was that we had marines in harm’s way, and it really bothered me. And towards the end of the verbal altercation—if you want to call it that—there was a little old lady, Asian lady. And I’m having a discussion with her. The Daily Illini was there covering the protest. And they took a picture. And it’s got me facing this little old lady—she’s smaller than I am—and a vein is just popping out of the side of my neck.

We get done with it, and I’m walking away from the Quad. And a lady comes up to me, and says: “I want to thank you for doing that. My husband’s a marine who’s overseas right now. And it’s hard for me to see these people protest everything he’s doing over there.” She says: “I’m just glad that somebody stood up and said something to somebody.” The politicians make the war, we go fight them, but the families that are left back here are truly the ones that are affected by them.

So that was my big welcoming to the University of Illinois, and the way that—and I can’t say the entire campus, and I can’t say the entire university but a very loud portion—how they welcomed a marine to the campus in ’03. It’s been fun ever since though.