The NYU College Republicans are creating controversy once again - big surprise.
Today, you might notice a table near the south side of the Silver Center manned by members, and the inevitable protesters arguing with them. This time the issue is immigration, and the Republicans are playing "Find the Illegal Immigrant," a game where the winner will find someone walking around with a tag reading "illegal immigrant." Ostensibly, participants in the game take a moment and read the Republican literature, or maybe even consider their policy offerings.
Oh, wait - never mind. We were starting to write this editorial as if the point or points of the event were policy, reading or even thinking. No one is under that illusion - not even the Republicans themselves. This is a publicity stunt, and everyone knows it. We think it's also the case that students are conditioned at this point to assume any College Republican event is a publicity stunt. This is unfair, but it's the College Republicans' own fault.
The Republicans have an inflated sense of their own marginalization on our campus. Yes, we recognize that most students here are liberals, as are a majority of professors. But that is something different from the liberal tyranny College Republicans think goes on here. It rarely does, yet the College Republicans overcompensate for this imagined oppression by staging excessively bombastic events.
This doesn't do anything to advance discussion of conservative ideas, but it does make for sexy news stories - stories that unfortunately reflect poorly on NYU as a whole. We don't think all NYU students should be conflated with the asinine antics of a few, but we're afraid that this is inevitably what happens.
By the way, College Democrats (and any other club thinking of drumming up PR with totally cool, OMG-I-can't-believe-they-did-that stunts): Don't get any cute ideas just because election season is right around the corner. The WSN editorial board is happy to criticize everyone.
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