SummEr/FAll 2011 - Nazareth College

INTERFAITH | ideas
Paths to Peace and Justice
by Robyn Rime
The growing field of
peace and justice
studies is fairly
new at Nazareth
and hasn’t yet been widely
promoted. Nonetheless,
students are increasingly
finding their way to this
interdisciplinary major—
many unexpectedly—and
arriving from surprisingly
varied backgrounds. They
are passionate, engaged,
and articulate. They all recognize
the value of conflict
resolution and responsible
living in a global society.
But they’re not all just antiwar,
and they’re definitely
not all hippies.
Tim Braley ’11 joined the
U.S. Army at age 17, needing
money for college and
thinking “tanks looked cool.” He was deployed to Iraq in 2005
as part of the Third Infantry Division. The army taught him not
only to kill people, but to want to kill people, he says. “And that
wasn’t who I was. They break you down and build you up as a
different person. I didn’t realize how much I had changed—or
even that I had—until I got out of the military.”
One thing the army taught was something they call reflex
firing, practicing a maneuver thousands of times to burn it
into muscle memory. “Trying not to think but just to shoot was
so scary,” Braley says, “especially considering the firepower a
tank has.”
Also frightening were the combat situations Braley experienced
while stationed in Iraq. One particularly overwhelming
incident, though technically legal and within the rules of
engagement, Braley himself viewed as murder. “I consider myself
an accomplice to those murders, not only because I did nothing
to stop them, but also because I, along with everyone else in my
unit, acted in ways that made murder possible,” he says. “There
Peace and justice studies majors Jarred Jones ’12, Ashley Ernst ’11, and Nick Croce ’13.
was a mental dissonance between who I really was and how I
was in the military.”
Stateside again, Braley moved to Rochester and, seeking
like-minded former soldiers, joined Iraq Veterans Against the
War (IVAW), an advocacy group of U.S. military personnel and
veterans who have served since 9/11 and who are opposed to
the U.S. occupation of Iraq. He discovered Nazareth offered
both the veteran’s scholarship he needed and the music major
he desired. “But I failed the audition for a music major because I
didn’t know why I wanted to major in music,” he says wryly.
What he did want was to “help change the negative things
I’ve willfully participated in, to help do more positive things than
I’ve done in the past. I wanted to make up for the things I’ve
done and live in a more socially responsible manner.”
For someone with those goals, peace and justice was a perfect
fit. “I wanted to grow personally, and I knew this major would
help me do that,” Braley says. “My concern isn’t about finding a
well-paying job, or even financial security, but finding where I fit
26 CONNECTIONS | Summer/Fall 2011 www.naz.edu