I saw that the Wide-Awakes were getting ready to do one of their semi-regular Torchlight Parades to "Take Back the Night", while walking on campus yesterday afternoon. I was dropping in on the kids at PSSFS, since they were holding their meetings the same night I swing by State College to pick up my comics from the 'Swap. As usual, they're having membership quorum problems. I ended up talking politics with some of them. One kid was a RA, and had to leave partway through the meeting to go along with the parade & track down people shouting from dorm windows at the paraders. He wasn't thrilled with the prospect, but stoutly defended the university policy of punishing morons for their exercise of free speech. The opinion that morons have first amendment rights like any other member of society seems to be the minority view on campus anymore.

Apparently the College Republicans are poking the left with sticks again, this time on the subject of illegal immigration. They *were* going to do some damnfool provocative stunt involving "catching an illegal immigrant", with CR types dressed in orange to signify their illegality, and rewarding folks for turning them in. This thankfully went by the wayside, and they got together with the Latino Caucus to do something more reasonable and college-boring, like holding a community meeting. In the meantime, their pointy-stick-poking had provoked some lefty types into getting together a direct-action group called, creepily, "True Voices" or something like that, which was indulging in minor illegalities of their own, like stealing shirts from USG. This is why poking people with pointy sticks is never a good idea. Even the YAF guy at the meeting was irked enough to be labeling the people nominally on his side "nativist" and conceding the "True Voices" point that there were "racists" among the College Republicans. Well, I haven't talked to the CR folks since the presidential election, so maybe things have changed over there, but they weren't, as a group, racist the last time I talked with them. Bah.

But hey! Won last night's tournament at HiWay. Pizza *and* victory. A good night.