Cooch Fires Up Students

It's great to see that Ken Cuccinelli is doing some good as Attorney General; he's inspiring students across Virginia to become activists!

Campus activists across Virginia put spring break on hold Monday to mobilize against Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, who has riled student groups with a letter advising public universities to retreat from their policies against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

More than 3,000 people joined the Facebook page "We Don't Want Discrimination In Our State Universities And Colleges!" Nearly 1,000 people joined another, started by activists at the College of William and Mary. The University of Virginia group Queer & Allied Activism urged students to protest on Cuccinelli's Facebook page and on Twitter.

Students at Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the few in the state not on break, planned a rally for noon Wednesday, with several hundred students committed. At Christopher Newport University, student Republican and Democratic leaders will discuss their next steps at a bipartisan meeting Friday.

"I've never gotten so many e-mails from students wanting to do something," said Brandon Carroll, 21, president of the student government at Virginia Tech. He said any erosion in gay rights at state universities is "going to make us lose top students. It's going to make us lose top faculty."

The students are right and I strongly encourage them to continue, and intensify, their activism against Cooch's bigotry. Not that I expect that a fanatic like Cooch will back off, but hopefully the students (and others) can exert pressure on others to rein Cooch in.

By the way, it looks like one of the people exerting pressure on Cooch will not be Sen. Robert Hurt (R-16), who apparently thinks state-sponsored bigotry against an entire group of people is fine and dandy.

"It seems to me that he was trying to get out his legal opinion," said Sen. Robert Hurt (R-Pittsylvania). "It doesn't seem like a clarion call to discriminate against anyone."

Oh no, not at all, it was just a harmless, innocent, unbiased legal opinion on an innocuous matter by Virginia's Attorney General. Uh huh.