The hunger strike is over, and contrary to what we we were told last night, so is the camp-out. Hunger-strikers and volunteers are currently taking down the tents, dismantling the Columbopus's remaining tentacles, and otherwise preparing to permanently vacate Butler Plaza.
Hunger striker Richard Brown, C '10 cited a "need to clean up" as one of the reasons for ending the nearly two-week encampment. "We can't have these out here forever," he said. "The tents have served their purpose."
While the tents were a pretty obvious presence on campus, less obvious was what the strikers were keeping inside of them: Bwog spotted about a dozen blankets, a few portable radios, musical instruments, and a cardboard box full of books, including Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, a Penguin collection of English romantic verse, a long essay by Noam Chomsky (with the ever so Chomskyan title of "The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many"), the 33 1/3 for Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, and an anthology of poetry read at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
If this was a bittersweet moment for the strikers, none of them were showing it. "The hunger strike is over, but the struggle continues" said striker April Simpson, C'11. Even though the strikers are abandoning their temporary home and base of operations, and potentially (severely) diminishing their visibility on campus, this is about as sentimental as things have gotten out there. Right now, they're pretty much just cleaning up.
-ARR
