After leaving the Minuteman Protest, Bwog sat down and e-mailed all the adminstrators it could think of for interviews. Chaplain Jewelnel Davis, who runs Earl Hall, responded via Blackberry at 6:30 AM the next morning. She and SGB program managers Jane Huber and Raquel Whittaker speak about protesting, free speech, and the swinging sixties.

When the idea to have Jim Gilchrist came up, what were your thoughts around that?

Chaplain Davis: We know that Columbia, at its very best, must be a place where free speech is affirmed and central, not only in the classrooms must there be a vigiorous exchange of ideas, but also if they have issues that their groups want to focus on, we are delighted for students to proposed events and propose speakers that will allow students first hand experience of what the issues are that face them as young people, and as citizens not only of Columbia, but of New York, of the region, of the country, of the world.

If you're going to have a speaker and have a question and answer session. You're at Columbia. If you want something to have a significant contribution to the Columbia Community, you make sure that there's a Question and Answer period.

In this case, for example, the speakers were scheduled to speak for 45 minutes, and then followed by a 45 minute question and answer period. Raquel and Jane had worked carefully and well with Chris Kulawik to make sure that the issues the College Republicans wanted to be heard, issues of immigration, were coming out. So it's not whether you read the newspaper, whether you've filtered through the television media, but no, you could say I was actually there with the people who were making the news that other people are reporting on.

At Columbia, you get to say I was there. The Minutemen are part of the national conversation about immigration, especially on the southern border of the United States, and the College Republicans wanted students to hear from them, and to interrogate. There were no bars on what the questions were going to be. There were no questions that were predetermined that could not be asked. The College Republicans made no effort to do that.