Did you feel frightened for your safety when attending Wake County school board meetings during the period of protests and arrests in 2010?

That's the charge that former Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta made during an interview Monday on the Bill LuMaye Show on WPTF to explain why he feels the protesters should go to trial instead of getting mediation.

Margiotta linked the protesters to Students for a Democratic Society, the leftist activist group that dates back to the 1960s. Some of the SDS members formed the Weather Underground, which was linked to bombings in the 1970s.

A few ideas that didn't make it into the story on former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo's speech at UNC-Chapel Hill on Monday:

Tancredo said America's younger generations don't appreciate the values their forbears built the nation on.

"We're not adding to that [cultural ]capital. We are merely spending it," he said. "Why we are not proud of who we are, I just don't know."

He compared Western academics to Muslim fundamentalists in their hatred of Western culture.

"Socialism does not tolerate a free marketplace of ideas," he said. "We cannot bequeath to our children and grandchildren our nanny-state-based societies."

At UNC-Chapel Hill, Tom Tancredo's return engagement went better than his first.

Tancredo, the outspoken former Colorado congressman who got shouted down last year in his first attempt to speak at UNC-CH, returned Monday night and completed his talk without any violence or aggression from the 100 or protesters who attended.

Instead, they registered their contempt for Tancredo, whose views opposing illegal immigration are well known, by walking out of his talk at the campus student union.

Last year, Tancredo's talk was shut down early by campus police after a window was broken. One student was arrested and the student organization that brought Tancredo to campus, Youth for Western Civilization, was all of a sudden in the spotlight.

Youth for Western Civilization is still in its infancy. Now in its second year, the UNC-CH chapter has about 10 students. Since sponsoring Tancredo's visit last year, its members have repeatedly been labeled "racist" and worse.

"Our policies are not based on the color of your skin," the group's leader, Daryl Ann Dunigan, said last week. "Our group isn't racist. We're just saying we should be able to appreciate the culture we have, since a lot of us seem to put our culture down to support a lot of other cultures."

The Tancredo mess last year created some problems for the group just as it was getting its footing. Its first advisor, physics professor Chris Clemens, stepped down out of concerns that the group's national organization, which provided funding to the UNC-CH chapter, was stirring up trouble unnecessarily.

A subsequent advisor was then forced to resign after making a somewhat off-color wisecrack in an e-mail about using his gun. The advising issue was finally resolved when three advisors were found to do the job collectively.

If students who protested the Tancredo talk last year sought to marginalize him, they did just the opposite. The controversial former lawmaker received apologies from UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp and UNC system President Erskine Bowles, and UNC-CH paid $3,000 to Youth for Western Civilization, a good-will gesture to be used as reimbursement for the group to bring another speaker to campus.

And while last year's Tancredo visit was held in a classroom, his return was in the Carolina Union auditorium - a far larger venue and an acknowledgment of the event's notoriety.

NOTE: This blog post has been updated.

UNC-Chapel Hill students who disrupted a speech by former congressman Tom Tancredo last year say they're going to do it again.

Tancredo's visit to campus last Spring was interrupted by a group of students whose protests resulted in a broken window and led campus police to shut down the lecture. 

They did so to rail against Tancredo's outspoken opposition to illegal immigration, the topic he had attempted to discuss that evening.

Now, Tancredo is coming back to UNC, once again at the behest of Youth for Western Civilization, a student group. The topic this time: "Is western civilization worth saving?"

And the same core group of student protesters pledge to disrupt the event again, though they declined to say specifically how they'd do so.

They likely raised Tancredo's profile on campus. Last year, he spoke in a classroom. When he returns to campus Monday, April 26 at 7 p.m., he'll speak in the auditorium at the campus student union, a far larger venue.

The event is free and open to the public, with a question-and-answer period to follow Tancredo's speech. For security purposes, all bags will be searched, according to a press release announcing the event.

Last year, UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp and UNC system President Erskine Bowles apologized to Tancredo for the students' actions and trumpeted the university's commitment to free speech and the exchange of ideas.

That didn't go over well with the protesters, who pointed out Wednesday that the former Colorado lawmaker's inflammatory rhetoric of late has included the recommendation that President Obama go "back" to Kenya.

"We don't think Tom Tancredo has the right to go around spewing his hate speech," said Ben Carroll, a senior from Raleigh. "The fact that our chancellor called him to apologize is appalling."

Daryl Ann Dunigan, who heads the Youth for Western Civilization group sponsoring Tancredo's visit, said the protesters are missing the point.

"I think they have the right to protest, but I believe their characterization of Tom Tancredo is incorrect," Dunigan said. "I'm hoping they'll actually listen to what he has to say."

The university has posted a series of ground rules for the event online.

Thorp, the university chancellor, said he hopes students do listen to Tancredo and lodge their protests peacefully.

"I realize there are people who [disagree] with Tom Tancredo," Thorp said Wednesday. "But this is a place where ideas are discussed, good and bad."

A group of about 10 students announced their protest plans Wednesday on campus. The group included Haley Koch, one of a handful of students charged with disturbing the peace following last year's protest at the Tancredo event and another. The charges were later dismissed.

Koch criticized the university for allowing Tancredo back on campus.

"The university has made it very clear what side it's on," she said. "It's on the side of white supremacy."

Though the event is free and open to the public, you need to get a ticket in advance. Tickets are available at the student union's box office, or you can call 962-1449 to reserve them.

The UNC Chapel Hill student organization that caused a stir on campus by bringing in two speakers who oppose illegal immigration has lost its faculty sponsor.

Chris Clemens, a professor of physics and astronomy, has stopped advising Youth for Western Civilization, a fledgling group that brought former congressmen Tom Tancredo and Virgil Goode to campus this past semester.

Tancredo's speech went off the tracks when protesters were so disruptive that campus police shut the event down, leading campus officials to call the former congressman to apologize.

Goode's talk the following week was marred again by protesters - several of whom were arrested - but he was able to finish speaking.

Clemens said today he supports the UNC-CH students who formed the local group, but thinks they should separate from the national Youth for Western Civilization organization, which helps fund the local group's activities. The national organization is led by "provocateurs" who like to stir things up and create controversy, Clemens said.

"The national group has its own agenda," he said, adding that bringing in controversial speakers baits protesters, who appear willing to continue protesting their campus events. "It's going to be impossible to have any constructive dialogue. The radical leftists on campus are not going to let them do anything without total disruption."

A conservative, Clemens says he's a rarity on the liberal Chapel Hill campus - so much so that he's one of just a couple professors conservative students can turn to when they need a group advisor.

Clemens advises three such groups now, and has been involved with as many as five at one time. But generally, it involves little heavy lifting; you sign some forms, you answer the occasional question. 

"My philosophy is that it's a student-run organization, so let the students run it," he said.

But the furors that erupted following the Tancredo appearance last semester illustrated to Clemens that the campus YWC group - as long as it carried that name - would create more trouble than he has time for. He'd be willing to help the YWC students if they broke from the national group and re-formed with a new name.

"It's my time, and it's my concern that this is not the best way to have a constructive conversation," he said.

The Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper, has more on the story here.

The cases against seven people arrested for protesting during two recent UNC Chapel Hill talks by former U.S. congressmen will be heard in September.

Charges against Morehed-Cain Scholar Haley Koch and six others will be heard in September. Koch was arrested following an April 14 talk by former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo and faces a disturbing the peace charge.

Several others who are not UNC students were arrested during an April talk featuring former U.S. Congressman Virgil Goode.

All seven were to be heard this morning. Koch's case was continued and the others declined plea agreements.

The six folks arrested last week during a campus speech at UNC Chapel Hill by former Congressman Virgil Goode were not students at the university.

Rather, they were members of a group called the Mayview Collective, a collection of radicals for whom liberal isn't liberal enough.

My colleague Jesse James Deconto has their story here.

UNC Chapel Hill has identified the six people charged with disrupting a speech on campus Wednesday night. None are current students or employees.

The six charged with disorderly conduct during the speech by former Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode are: Meredith Ann Dickey, 18, of 824 Chamberlain Road, Raleigh; Michael Bandes, 25, of
1714 Jo Mac Road in Orange County; Sarah Monica Johnson, 25, of 822 Chamberlain Street, Raleigh; Jack Wilson Groves, 18, of 822 Chamberlain Street, Raleigh; Donald George Yeo, 30, of 206 Prince Street, Carrboro; and Rachel Love Harris, 22, of 1714 Jo Mac Road in Orange County.

The university also announced today that one student, Helen Elizabeth Koch, has been charged with disorderly conduct during last week’s appearance on campus by former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo.

A week after the Tom Tancredo fiasco at UNC Chapel Hill, a conservative student organization is bringing another former legislator to campus to speak.

Youth for Western Civilization, the small UNC-CH student group that last week brought the former Colorado congressman to campus for what turned out to be an aborted speaking engagement, will tonight present Virgil Goode, a former Virginia congressman.

Goode will speak at 6:30 p.m. at the student union on campus.

Meanwhile, student groups bothered by the western youth student group — which has been assailed by some and labeled racist — are organizing a "Speak-out for Diversity" at the same time.

That event will be at The Pit on campus, and is intended, according to a press release, to "allow students from a variety of different groups and backgrounds to explain why they are opposed to the goals of Youth for Western Civilization and why they believe in fostering an educational environment that allows all people to thrive."

A higher education trade journal has parachuted into the UNC Chapel Hill/Tom Tancredo/tuition-for-illegal-immigrants/student protestors brouhaha with a story about Youth for Western Civilization, the student organization that brought the controversial congressman to campus last week.

If you recall, Tancredo's planned speaking engagement didn't go so well. He barely got started before student protesters essentially drove him from the room amid the sound of a shattered window pane.

Youth for Western Civilization is a small student group. It has less than 10 chapters nationally and on the Chapel Hill campus, it has about that many members. But it certainly got people's eye last week bringing Tancredo in.

As Riley Matheson, the head of the local chapter, put it in this Inside Higher Ed article: "We're still considered probably by most students to be sort of a rogue group right now."