“Fifteen,” said the woman at the front doors of Herrick Auditorium, “fifteen is all we can take, no more.”
The small auditorium was packed to the brim, with students and faculty standing at the back, leaning on the walls for comfort. On the stage was Professor Greg Supernovich, ready to give his lecture on the nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Rather than giving a history lesson, Supernovich pressed the audience to have a revelation, an “aha moment.” That is, a moment of clarity, a moment in which the onlooker would realize that nuclear disarmament is a must, if our global society is to see an extended future.
To hammer this point home, he had on stage a door and frame. In explaining the “aha moment” he used the door as a metaphor for a person’s epiphany; that one must walk through the door, and find understanding.
Aiding the professor through his lecture was a series of pictures, handouts and audio. The pictures were from his trip to Japan, to discover the history behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also had gruesome pictures of the destruction after the United States’ nuclear attacks on Japan; destroyed buildings, the sick, dying and deceased in the streets, all images burned in the memories of thousands.
In showing the pictures he also hoped to spread inspiration.
“My generation has failed to create a world that’s reasonably just. You guys have the power to unify the world.”
Without that unification, Supernovich doesn’t think that there is much hope, saying “I believe that we live at the edge of total human annihilation.”
A student in the audience, sophomore Jordan Vickers particularly liked the use of media throughout the presentation.
“The pictures really made his message hit home,” Vickers said.
But what was the response to the message that Supernovich was sending? What was response to that message of movement, through the actions of all nuclear powers, towards world-wide disarmament? Well the points he gave certainly seemed to make sense to the audience members questioned.
Again, the student body seemed to concur with the ideas of Supernovich.
“Well, he made a good point. At the rate we’re going, we probably will be the cause of our own destruction,” Vickers said.
Students were not the only representatives of the Castleton community, in fact several other professors were in attendance. John Gillen, professor of English, fully supported the movement for disarmament, world-wide.
“Well, if you take a look at what (Supernovich) passed out. It’s frightening that we have 5400 times more (nuclear) firepower than we did during the time of World War II . if we don’t find ways to disarm, sooner or later some leader will have the reason or the excuse to use it, and the damage will be horrendous,” Gillen said.