Christendom Students stand up for Terri Schiavo; disappointed with indifference

Mar 15, 2005 / 22:00 pm

Last week, twenty-one students from Virginia’s Christendom College traveled to Florida to join their voices in the fight for brain-damaged Terri Schiavo.

Schiavo, 41, is scheduled to have the feeding tube, which provides her with food and hydration removed this Friday. In February, Florida Judge George Greer ruled in favor of Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband who has been trying to get the feeding tube removed for years.

Terri’s family and countless pro-life supporters have vowed to see the ruling overturned before the March 18^th deadline.

After a sixteen-hour bus trip, the Christendom students joined hundreds more for a March 12^th rally in front of Tampa’s Woodside Hospice, where Terri currently resides.

According to the college, many students were disappointed with the relatively small turnout for what many are calling the “Roe vs. Wade of euthanasia.”

Junior John Jalsevac, who wrote about the trip for Christendom’s newsletter, noted a fellow student who said to him, “I still cannot think or believe that Terri’s feeding tube is going to be removed on Friday. And even if they do remove it, surely someone will see her suffering and will stop it.”

Jalsevac said that, “Standing in front of Terri’s hospice, together with her family and friends, brought home the brutal reality that this was not so, that only some people feel as we do.”

The group also spent time distributing informational leaflets on car windows at local churches. There too, the students said, reactions were mixed.

Jalsevac said that many pastors asked them to leave their churches, while some parishioners simply voiced frustration at the continuing story. “It soon became painfully clear to us that, at the very least, the locals had almost completely given up on Terri and had chosen to forget her.”

Another student lamented, “This woman may very well die because of our country’s short attention span.”

Others however, remain hopeful. “The fact that there were so few of us”, said student Chrissy Walsh, “made that hope all the more powerful.”

A new bill which could give Terri’s parents access to a federal court to again argue for their daughter’s life is currently gaining strength in congress.

Schiavo’s supporters are holding their breaths, awaiting Friday’s quickly approaching deadline.