"I don't believe this," he said, staring into the lenses. "Who says we have freedom of speech? My God, I've come up here to express a free opinion, and just because I am opposed to fascism, the President of the Student Government tries to throw me out of the Plex! My home! That's right, if these different people don't like being oppressed, just throw them out of their homes into the dangerous city! I didn't think this kind of savagery was supposed to exist in a university." He shook his head in noble sadness, surveyed the derisive crowd defiantly, and marched away from the mike to grateful applause. Below, he answered questions from the media while the next student came to the microphone.
He looked like a male cheerleader for a parochial school football team, being handsome, well groomed, and slightly pimpled. As he took possession of the mike the OM stopped. He kept his eye on a middle-aged fellow standing in the aisle not far away, who in turn watched the SUBbie's press conference in front of the stage. Finally the older gentleman held up three fingers. The TUGgie shoved his fist between his arm and body and spoke loudly and sharply into the mike.
"I'd like to announce that I have caught a bat here in my hand, and now I'm going to bite the head off it right here as a sacrifice to the God of Communism."
Below, the SUBbie found himself in absolute darkness, and tripped over a power cord. Simultaneously the TUGgie squinted as all lights were swung around to bear on him. He smiled and began to talk in a calm chantlike voice. "Well, well, well. I've got a confession. I'm not really going to bite the head off a bat, because I don't even have one, and I'm not a Communist." There was now a patter of what sounded like canned TV laughter from the TUG section. "I just did that as a little demonstration, to show you folks how easy it is to get the attention of the media. We can come and talk about serious issues and do real things, but what gets TV coverage are violent eye-catching events, a thing which the Communists who wish to destroy our society understand very well. But I'm not here to give a speech, I'm here to propose an amendment. . ." Here he was divebombed by the bat, who veered away at the last moment; the speaker jumped back in horror, to the amusement of almost everyone. The TUGgies laughed too, showing that, yes, they did have a sense of humor no matter what people said. The speaker struggled to regain his composure.
"The speech! Resume the speech! The amendment!" shouted the older man.
"My budget proposal is that we take away all funding for the Stalinist Underground Battalion and distribute it among the other activities groups."
The lecture hall exploded in outraged chanting, uproarious applause, and OM. Sarah sat for about fifteen seconds with her chin in her hand, then began smashing the gavel again. I was seated off to the side of the stage, poised to act as the strong-but-lovable authority figure, but did not have to stand up; eventually things quieted down.
"Is there a second to the motion?" she asked wearily. The crowd screamed YES and NO.
The speaker yielded to another TUGgie, who stood rigidly with a stack of 3-x -5 cards and began to drone through them. "At one time the leftist organizations of American Megaversity could claim that they represented some of the students. But the diverse organizations of the Left soon found that they all had one member who was very strident and domineering and who would push the others around until he or she had risen to a position of authority within the organization. These all turned out to be secretly members of the Stalanist Underground Battalion who had worked themselves in organizations in order to merge the Left into a single bloc with no diversity or freedom of thought. The SUB took over a women's issues newsletter and turned it into the People's Truth Publication, a highly libelous so-called newspaper. In the same way…"
He was eventually cut off by Sarah. SUB spokespersons stated their views passionately, then another TUGgie. Finally a skinny man in dark spectacles came to the mike, a man whom Sarah recognized but couldn't quite place. He identified himself as Casimir Radon and said he was president of the physics club Neutrino. He quieted the crowd down a bit, as his was the first speech of the evening that was not entirely predictable.
"I'd like to point out that you've only given us four hundred dollars," he said. "We need more. I've done some analysis of the way our activity money is budgeted, which I will just run through very quickly here-- " he fumbled through papers as a disappointed murmur rose from the audience. How long was this nerd going to take? The cameramen put new film and tape in their equipment as lines formed outside by the restrooms.
"Here we go. I won't get too involved in the numerical details-- it's all just arithmetic-- but if you look at the current budget, you see that a small group of people is receiving a hugely disproportionate share of the money. In effect, the average funding per member of the Stalinist Underground Battalion is $114.00, while the figure for everyone else averages out to about $46.00, and only $33.00 for Neutrino. That's especially unfair because Neutrino needs to purchase things like books and equipment, while the expenses of a political organization are much lower. I don't think that's fair."
The SUB howled at this preposterous reasoning but everyone else listened respectfully.