Last Friday’s “march on Gerberding Hall” by the March 1st Solidarity student group solidified a theory that I have been developing: The majority of student-led “protests” are little more than ridiculous, misguided efforts to vent a baseless anger by creating imaginary issues and disrupting actual productivity.

Take March 1st’s rally, for example. A handful of students misconstrue the U.S. military presence in South Korea and call for immediate troop withdrawal, ignoring the fact that Kim Jong-Il would be riding a tank into downtown Seoul the day after we leave. But what is astounding is that they try to contort this political disagreement into a racial issue, calling U.S. military aid “white supremacy.”

Are you kidding me?

Without getting into the tomfoolery and lack of logic that went into such a claim, it is their perceived remedy that is truly confounding — demanding that the UW administration pull the funds of any contractors that are involved in the U.S. military in South Korea.

Obviously, the administration was disinclined to acquiesce their request.

But even when the UW invited the group to a private meeting to discuss their concerns, March 1st Solidarity would settle for nothing less than a public debate. The fact that President Mark Emmert was even willing to entertain the notion of meeting with these rebels without a viable cause proves he has the patience of a certain Buddhist monk.

Even if, by some bizarre anti-miracle, the UW gave in to their demands, the insignificant dent in the financial infrastructure of the American forces would be hardly crippling. Furthermore, the rest of the freethinking world would not suddenly wake up one morning and believe that the U.S. military is really just a tool of the Aryan Nation. So even if the M1S’s wildest dreams came true, they would still have done nothing more than waste Emmert’s time.

An example of a group that has a larger impact on counter-productivity also reared its ugly head last week — animal rights activists. I’m not talking about the handful of geniuses who think that by becoming vegans the meat and dairy industries will come grinding to a screeching halt, because, again, the next-to-nothing impact that they have is completely irrelevant. I’m referring to the simpletons who target drug developers who test products on animals.

These people ignore the copious amounts of FDA regulations put in place to ensure animal well-being and instead protest the best means of improving drug safety. This has inevitably led to inordinate price hikes in the pharmaceutical market, ironically making the pills that these protestors need later in life to help with their cholesterol too expensive. Unfortunately, we all suffer the consequences of their actions, which is why we now find ourselves in the midst of a Medicare crisis.

Perhaps the most ridiculous example of baseless protest came a few months ago when First Nations (an American Indian student organization) claimed that the celebration of Columbus’ lack of navigational abilities, which led to his mistaken discovery of North America, was equivalent to praising genocide. As a low-income student with an American Indian heritage, I was embarrassed that this ludicrous statement was uttered in public.

Certainly, throughout history there have been protests that had a truly positive impact on our evolution as a society. The civil rights movement is an obvious example. But for some reason, our generation’s student body has yet to truly focus its hyped-up, anarchy-based energy toward anything productive. However, the emergence of the eco-bandwagon is showing promise as the most effective movement of our time.

Let us hope this trend continues so we all won’t have to endure another protest that defies logic and lacks real purpose.