Applied engineering sciences senior Andrew White signs a banner made by the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association at the Engineering Building Wednesday. The banner will be sent to Beijing to be hung next to the main stadium for the Olympics.
As thousands of people walk into the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games, they will be greeted with 100-foot banners with the signatures of people from around the world — one sporting the John Hancock of MSU students.
For the past two weeks, the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association has been traveling across campus collecting the signatures of students and faculty to support the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
The banner is being created as a sign of friendship and tribute to the games, said Chenrui Wang, public relations officer for the group.
“It represents all the best wishes from East Lansing to celebrate the Olympics,” Wang said.
With an estimated 10,000 signatures, the banner will be rolled and shipped to Beijing today, where eventually it will hang on the stadium with similar banners from schools and other locales around the globe, Wang said.
The 2008 games, however, have recently been the source of some international controversy.
Last month, unrest broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, where riots protesting the harsh Chinese rule in the region led to the incursion of Chinese troops and police. The unrest coincided with the Olympic torch’s relay path through the region.
Some students have had a difficult time supporting both the banner signing and the games, said Sarah Oliai, president of the MSU chapter of Students for a Free Tibet.
“At this point in time, we can’t support the banner or the games because of how the (Chinese) government is ignoring human rights violations,” Oliai said. “But if they decide to address these issues, we would fully support the signing of the banner and China hosting the Olympics.”
The MSU group was restarted in the past few weeks, Oliai said, partly because of a long standing interest in Tibet, but also in response to the upheaval in the region.
“We want to raise awareness of different human rights violations in the world and what MSU students can do,” Oliai said.
The banner has nothing to do with the politics surrounding the Olympics, just the games themselves, Wang said.
“Our purpose to do this is not for politics — it’s not for Tibet,” she said. “No matter what happens with Tibet, it’s got no relation to the Olympics. We’re just collecting signatures to show support for China. We’re just celebrating Olympics.”
While he said he supported the banner project and signed it, Peter Briggs, director of the Office of International Students, said with the controversy surrounding the games, it would be difficult to separate the politics from the sport.
“It will engage the debate, and I think that’s a good thing,” Briggs said.
“I think we should embrace that debate, and with students from 138 countries, MSU is one of the best places to have that debate and be open and honest in discussions about that.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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