Students protest defense contractor at Pepperdine Career Fair

As Pepperdine students congregated in Joslyn Plaza on Friday  to discuss employment opportunities with a variety of organizations they heard something unexpected: a protest of one of the companies that Pepperdine invited to the Career Fair.More than 150 students of all academic majors attended the annual Career Fair to speak to representatives of 32 companies including the defense contractor Raytheon.But according to the five student protestors inviting Raytheon— a leading American defense contractor and industrial corporation that is one of the world’s largest producers of guided missiles— violated Pepperdine’s Christian mission.The students distributed fliers explaining that they viewed the company’s production of weapons as fundamentally unethical. Therefore they said it should not advertise through events at a Christian university. After laying a blanket near the Raytheon booth and setting up various instruments senior Keith Cantu announced through a mega-phone that the protestors would be protesting Raytheon’s presence on campus by singing Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” The small gathering performed the protest song expressed their wish that Raytheon be made unwelcome on campus and then disbanded.Kristen Robertson a Pepperdine graduate of 2009 who served as a representative of Raytheon at the fair said that she was disappointed in how the protestors chose to express themselves.”If they’d come up and talked to me I would have been happy to have a conversation with them Robertson said. What they did was cowardly. Shouting over people is never the way to end a problem– the way to end a problem is dialogue.”Among the protestors was freshman Kacie Scherler who said she opposed the presence of weapons manufacturers at the career fair because of Pepperdine’s Christ-centered morals. “We’re supposed to be bearers of love and Raytheon is the exact opposite of that she said.Freshman Brody Wooton, another protestor, agreed with Scherler’s views and pointed out that our mission statement is about loving other people.”A representative of the Pepperdine Career Center declined to comment.