About 25 students protested Columbus Day outside the Memorial Union on Monday, carrying signs bearing the words: “Columbus raped my culture,” “Happy Genocide Day” and “Why not have ‘Hitler Day?’”

The protestors also collected signatures for a petition for President Michael Crow’s office to remove listings of Columbus Day from agendas sold to students at the campus bookstore.

The day marks the landing of the Pinta, one of three Spanish ships commanded by Christopher Columbus, on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas.

Protestors, many of whom come from the Latino and Native American communities, said the day glorifies subjugation of Native American cultures and civilization under the Europeans.

Unlike most government institutions, ASU did not shut down for the federal holiday, but students representing several social-interest groups on campus said they take offense to the listing of the holiday in student agendas.

“It’s still in the ASU agendas, and we just don’t want it to be celebrated at all,” said Daisy Cruz, a Chicano and Latino studies junior who was at the protest. “We just want more awareness on the subject because it’s taken too lightly.”

Kinesiology sophomore Ramiro Garcia said he believes putting the holiday in the University’s agenda calendars is the same as recognizing it.

“ASU says they don’t recognize it because everyone still has school,” Garcia said. “But they’re [being] hypocrites by putting it on the calendar.”

Education sophomore Maria Allande played dead on the ground during the protest to symbolize deaths due to violence and disease after the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

Movimiento Estudiantíl Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), Women Beyond Borders and Council for Advocating an Indigenous Manifesto were all involved in the demonstration, which Garcia said reached 50 protestors at its peak.

This is the second year the Columbus Day protests have happened at ASU, but this is the first year the protestors collected signatures for a petition, which will be sent to Crow.

MEChA spokeswoman Sandra Castro said she wanted to do more than vocalize the group’s disapproval of Columbus Day. She wanted the protests to yield action this year.

“We just wanted something positive to come out of the protests,” Castro said. “We’re trying to shed a positive light on our movement.”

Janna Wright, a communications junior who was eating outside the MU during the protest, said she couldn’t see why the protestors were so outraged over a listing in the calendar when the University doesn’t recognize the holiday by giving students and faculty the day off.

“I can’t understand why they would go to all that trouble,” Wright said, referring to the petition. “It’s just absurd. Why would they be so offended by that?”

University spokeswoman Sharon Keeler said she was unsure what the groups’ demands were because the holiday is not observed on campus.

“It’s not a University holiday, and it’s not on the academic calendar,” Keeler said. “The University doesn’t know at this point what the students are protesting.”

Keeler said the agendas are printed by the bookstore and any concerns about agenda calendars would need to go through the bookstore, not through the President’s office.

She added the University would try to open communications with the three groups to discuss their concerns.

Reach the reporter at derek.quizon@asu.edu.