For those of you who may not be in the loop, some Gusties joined students from all over the U.S. on Sunday, March 2, to protest the proposed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. While I may not be as informed on the matter as groups such as the Gustie Greens, I did do a little a research.

I found that TransCanada/Keystone already has a pipeline in place, and in general, the benefits do not seem to outweigh the costs for a country already in serious debt. But after hearing one Gustie protestor say, “well, the point was to get arrested” after asking about the protest, I started to have my doubts about the whole movement.

If the goal of exercising our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and to petition our government is just to get detained for a cause, there is something wrong; how is any cause going to be realized when its advocates are filling out police paperwork?

Of course, not every student—or even very many—would say their only reason for protesting was to say, “Look Ma, I got arrested!” and pay a fine, but it’s worth addressing those who do use that as a motivating factor for their “civil disobedience.” One reason is that, as David Blackmon demonstrates in his article “Keystone XL Protest – An Exercise In Hypocrisy And Ignorance” on Forbes.com, there are many critics of student movements who pick on us for being ignorant, misguided, etc. just because we’re young. In the article, Blackmon comments on a photo taken at the protest of a guy holding a sign that says “Climate Change=Class War” saying, “this fellow either doesn’t read much or simply wandered into the wrong protest by mistake.”

While I would say that Blackmon’s article is in general petty, immature (how ironic), and even mean-spirited, in the aforementioned example, I have to wonder if he isn’t right about a lot of people. I am curious—how many people involved in the movement actually know what they are protesting? How many people were roped into attending or making a sign by their friends? I personally have had that happen to me and have very mixed feelings about the event. How many people wanted “to get arrested” or just be in people’s faces?

Some “in-your-face” methods are no doubt required to bring about action, but the problem arises when the focus is on demonizing the government or just causing a ruckus to be an anarchist for a day.

In an interview with Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman also asserted that students were “planning to get arrested” in her question to McKibben of why the movement is so important. Being ready for such an event in one thing, but planning it? That does not seem very productive.

We may have to speak loud and long for the President and Congress to hear us, but getting arrested does not really change anything. It gives the newscasters and other reporters numbers to tout at people, sure. But the number of people simply present should be sufficient to convey to the government and the rest of the U.S. citizens in the dark about this issue that it’s worth looking into on an individual basis.

There is a time and a place for everything though, and if you want to protest the corruption of the justice system, then getting arrested or held against your will for doing something legal might be more effective. Gandhi, for example, was imprisoned more for his ideas than anything “illegal” he did, and that, of course, is wrong and should not happen anywhere.

But the protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline is about the environment, is it not? It’s not that we can only protest one thing at a time, but focus will inevitably draw more respect from our “elders.”

So let us show Obama and all the presidents to come that we know the cost of environmental degradation, and that we are looking to make the world a better place to live in—not to just party in the streets and piss people off.