New York Daily News - Home - 'Immigration' game at NYU crosses line, students say
A student Republican club at New York University is getting heat for organizing a "Find the Illegal Immigrant" game on campus tomorrow.
Participants in the contest will try to win a gift certificate by being the first to point out a club member wearing a nametag reading "Illegal Immigrant."
Other students at the high-priced school have bombarded club officials with e-mails branding the event "racist" and "disgusting." Some students plan to counter the game with a protest.
"It's not a racist event, first and foremost," said Sarah Chambers, 21, president of the College Republicans. "Just because we don't want illegal immigrants being able to completely disregard the laws of our country doesn't make us racist."
Chambers, a politics major, said students must show their NYU identification to be deemed "INS" agents and to search the person wearing the nametag.
"The person that is being the 'illegal immigrant' is not an actual undocumented worker or illegal immigrant," Chambers insisted.
She admitted the game is provocative, but it's intended to get students to pay attention and debate the issue of illegal immigration.
Up to 300 students are expected to protest the game. On a campus Internet bulletin board, protest organizers said, "We need to show that this type of racist action is completely unacceptable."
Okay, so because this is blowing up all over the news, I figured I should clarify some misconceptions about the event. I'm not involved in any way, as I don't go to the CR meetings anymore, and I don't particularly think this is a good idea because it opens the door for stupid people to create bad PR, but I also don't think lies should be spread about the event.
1) The event does not involve actual illegal immigrants or searching for them, as the AP story has claimed. It's going to have a volunteer wearing a nametag that says illegal immigrant, and a bunch of people playing hide and go seek. There's going to be a big table where the rest of the people will be passing out flyers talking about illegal immigration.
2) The event went under the radar for a while, until a group of radicals saw it and immediately misconstrued it as a racist, bigoted event that was actually planning on searching out and catching illegal immigrants, when in reality it has nothing to do with that. Since then, because so many people are too dumb/lazy to actually research what they're told, the vast majority of people have come to believe this point of view through ignorance.
3) The counterprotest (which is already up to about 600 people who have registered so far on facebook), is being run by people who are equally as far out there as the people who are putting on the republican event. Their slogans, "No one is illegal" and "World without borders" are absolutely absurd.
4) The original event invite has been deleted by facebook because of so many threats of violence against the creators by people who were angry about the event.
So there you have it, thats the story, its going to happen tomorrow afternoon and should be a ****show. I've got work, so I won't be there, but I know that at least one other person from this forum will (on the protester side), so maybe they can give us an update after it happens.


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