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Members of the Friendship Association of Chinese Students and Scholars plan to send the cream-colored cloth with the signatures to the organizing committee to show support for the August games.
Recent protests of the Olympic torch relay, a symbolic journey around the world, have targeted China's perceived human rights violations in Sudan and Tibet.
"We don't need to mix Olympics and politics," said Wei Luo, a UNC chemistry graduate student and president of the association. "The Olympic Games are the world's dream and the world's game."
Journalism graduate student Amy Shirong Lu said she watched coverage of the torch relay and thought the media gave an unfair amount of attention to the protesters.
"Many Chinese people are hurt by the media's portrayal of the situation," Lu said. "The spirit here today is to show the Olympic spirit, not use the Olympics as an excuse to hijack the governments."
But Duke University junior Adam Weiss, a member of the Duke Undergraduate Human Rights Coalition, said the Olympics are inherently political and therefore valid grounds for protest.
Weiss organized a pro-Tibet demonstration on his campus Wednesday, gathering a group of students for a cross-campus run holding Tibetan flags.
The demonstration faced a group of 60 to 80 counter-protesters carrying Chinese flags and blocking the view of the runners.
"I wanted to take the idea of celebrating these Olympics through a torch relay and do the reverse," he said. "Instead of celebrating the Chinese government, I said, 'Let's celebrate the Tibetan people who are often neglected and forgotten.'"
Weiss said that while he was glad to see the activism, he supports boycotting the opening ceremonies.
UNC geography professor Christopher Gaffney, who is teaching a course next fall titled "Globalization and Sport," said the opening ceremony is a good time to bring up political issues.
"It is an international exhibition," he said.
In response to China's violations, world leaders such as the president of France have said they will not attend the opening ceremony.
UNC journalism professor Charles Tuggle, who will lead a group of journalism students to Beijing this summer to report for the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, said he thinks the end result of the Olympic protests will be good.
"The Chinese know what they are doing and want to show themselves as a major world player, so they knew that some major criticism was going to come along with it," Tuggle said.
Source: The Daily Tar Heel Accessed: April 17, 2008.