As concerned students of this University, we write regarding this year's Job Expo sponsored by the Career Center and the Mendoza College of Business. Having read over the list of participating organizations, we are very much alarmed at the presence of a number of the groups seeking to recruit students from our University. We question the moral and social responsibility of two organizations in particular. We feel that the inclusion of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Raytheon directly contradicts the mission of our University.
As our mission statement reads, the intent of the University "is to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice." Instead of fostering a sense of solidarity and justice, as we are called, these organizations are founded on the propagation of a society that creates and consumes violence.
In the Iraq war, which has been strongly and repeatedly condemned as unjust by secular and religious leaders around the world, Raytheon received 9.1 billion dollars in weapons contracts in only one year (2005). Its 5,000 pound "bunker buster" bombs have been raining down on the people of Afghanistan since 2001. Raytheon's profit increases only as American actions take the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The Central Intelligence Agency, while claiming to be our nation's "first line of defense," has become one of the most misused tools in America's unjust foreign policy. Its tactics have recently led to charges by the New Yorker and the Washington Post that the CIA maintains secret detention centers. A new report released by six leading human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, charges the CIA with the disappearance of 39 individuals. The secret detention and disappearance of these individuals comes in addition to the CIA's use of torture tactics, including waterboarding, in their morally questionable involvement in the War on Terror.
We believe that Notre Dame should act in accordance with the Mission Statement upon which it was founded. We believe that the presence of both the CIA and Raytheon cannot be reconciled with our responsibility to "assist the world in creating justice grounded in love." We call on University President Father John Jenkins and the administration to reevaluate the presence of such organizations that would seek to exploit our education for service to injustice and violence rather than justice and love. We call on him to take a conscientious position regarding the direction of our University on this matter. We ask that, in the spirit of our University's mission statement, he restrict the recruitment efforts of these organizations on our campus.
Michael Angulo, Kristi Haas and Alicia Quiros are writing on behalf of Notre Dame Peace Fellowship, Human Rights Notre Dame and Progressive Student Alliance.
Michael Angulo
junior
Kristi Hass
Alicia Quiros
sophomores
Sept. 18
