It was a little tense in the Bingham Hall classroom as former congressman Tom Tancredo was attempting to discuss his opposition to in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Students were hissing, and a couple stretched a broad banner across the front of the room, blocking him.
But the event Tuesday night at UNC Chapel Hill still might have continued, had not a window broken. In that moment, the university got its black eye. Murmurs grew louder, people rose from their seats and Tancredo bolted.
The broken window, incidentally, is valued at $50.
This from the official UNC police report on the incident, which you can view for yourself by clicking on the attachment to this blog entry.
The report tells one story. Student protesters tell a different one, claiming police roughed some of them up and shot pepper spray at them.
Read more about that here.
The national leader for Youth for Western Civilization, whose UNC chapter brought Tancredo to campus, would like the university to pay to bring Tancredo back and try it all again.
To that, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp told me yesterday: "If a student group comes to me and wants to do that, I'll listen."
