And the letters about the UNC-CH incident keep coming. Here are eight more online-only. Check out tomorrow's editorial page for more.

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."

Documents:

Here are five more letters regarding the incident at UNC-Chapel Hill. Find more here and on tomorrow's editorial page.

UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp has issued a statement today apologizing to former Congressman Tom Tancredo, whose speaking engagement Tuesday night on campus ended abruptly in the midst of a student protest.

Thorp wrote that he was "disappointed" by the incident and called Tancredo today to apologize.

He wrote in part:

There's a way to protest that respects free speech and allows people with opposing views to be heard. Here that's often meant that groups protesting a speaker have displayed signs or banners, silently expressing their opinions while the speaker had his or her say. That didn't happen last night.

 

Here's the full text of his statement to the university community. 

We're getting more letters about the incident at UNC-Chapel Hill than we'll be able to print. Here's a look at 10, all from readers
appalled by those students and faculty members who kept Tom Tancredo from being able to deliver his speech against in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Find others on tomorrow's editorial page.

Tom Tancredo, the former Colorado congressman whose speaking engagement at UNC Chapel Hill Tuesday ended early and abruptly due to a protest, has issued a statement about the incident.

Tancredo, on campus to discuss his opposition to in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants, mocked the tolerance of the "open borders left."

Here's his entire statement, which he sent out today in an e-mail.

Dear Friend,
 
The open borders left once again proved just how "tolerant" they are yesterday when they rioted and shut down a speech I tried to give at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Riley Matheson, a former intern at Team America, and his group Youth for Western Civilization asked me to speak on the issue of in state tuition for illegal aliens.  And the so called purveyors of tolerance and diversity showed just how open minded they are when it comes to diversity of opinions.

Hundreds of protesters yelled obscenities, tried to put a banner saying "No One is Illegal" in front of me.  They even broke a window. The police used mace and threatened to use tasers, but no protesters were arrested or disciplined.  There is no freedom of speech on hundreds of university campuses today for people who dare to dissent from the radical political agenda of the socialist left and the open borders agitators. 

Bay and I are not deterred by these radicals and we're both going to be speaking on more campuses this week.  We are also helping bring my friend Virgil Goode to UNC next week to make sure our message gets heard, and I plan to go back there again.

There's video of the riot and links to news stories at the Team America website for more information.

We know we're making a difference when we get the open borders crazies this upset. 

Keep up the fight.

Your friend,

Tom

A talk by former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo at UNC Chapel Hill spiraled quickly out of control Tuesday night when protestors disrupted the speech and sent Tancredo scurrying for cover.

As Jesse Deconto reports, Tancredo, who opposes in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants, only spoke for a few minutes before protestors broke a window at Bingham Hall.

Tancredo's appearance on campus was sponsored by the UNC-CH chapter of Youth for Western Civilization, a national group of students who oppose mass immigration, affirmative action and multiculturalism.