Club Profile: Tea Party Club

By Colleen Cable

Forget your grandma’s tea parties. The “tea parties” held by the new club on campus, the Tea Party Club, are large protests against the school and the government. The club is an official branch of the national Tea Party Movement, known for its fiscal conservatism and libertarian ideals. The club was established in reaction to Gettysburg College’s “socialist and over the top” spending habits as well as its overtly liberal policies, said the president of the club, Earl Gray.

“I think people are finally realizing that in this recession, we can’t just sit back and let the school steal money straight out of our pockets. Our club is really gaining momentum because more and more people like the idea of not paying for things,” he said.

Their protests, held on Stein Lake, are big ordeals with dozens of people gathering and waving tea bags and protest signs, while chanting “tea bag them before they tea bag you.” With a threat like that, it’s hard to believe the club isn’t larger than it is. “I’m not worried about size,” said Gray. “Do you think Thomas Jefferson or George Washington were popular?” he said.

“What’s great about the protests is that we all share a sense of peace and unity within the group. When we protest there’s an open invitation for anyone to join us. We’ve got loads of extra signs with us, just in case,” said club member Chami Mile, motioning to a pile of signs saying things like “Hear My Voice or Hear My Gun,” and “Throw Morgan Riggs Under the Bus.” “I think the signs are really effective,” she said. “They get our message across, while still remaining non-partisan.”

Among other concerns the club raises against the administration, the concern over the school’s “obvious and unfair” liberal bias. For example, many of the club members cited the newly acquired ESPN channels as “just more liberal television stations” by which students can be “brainwashed into the mainstream culture that abandons everything this country is founded upon,” said club member and fierce defender of his American nationality, Darjeeling Oolong. “If you look at which stations the college provides, it’s apparent that the majority are liberal television stations,” he said. In fact, the only “media stations of quality and non-partisanship” are FOX News, FOX, The Weather Channel, CSPAN (only if there is a Republican majority in the House/Senate), and The Game Show Network. Other mainstream stations such as French TV-5, the History Channel, and all other network television is inherently biased. “The school isn’t even hiding their bias. It’s no accident,” said Gray. “Television here is only the first step in the school’s mission to turn us all into socialists.”

Not only is the club working on a petition to ban many television stations on campus, it is also working towards the disbandment of Center for Public Service and Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity. “Both of those organizations are inherently socialist because they want to distribute the wealth, as the democrats say,” said Mile. “What distribute the wealth really means is to take my hard-earned money and dole it out to a bunch of lazy poor people and immigrants,” said a club member as he adjusted his white Vineyard Vines hat as he simultaneously texted someone on his iPhone.

Another mission of the club is to change the Environmental Science department curriculum, as well as rework the Gettysburg Environmental Concerns Organization (GECO) because they endorse global warming. Protestors attend meetings with signs saying “Cap n’ trade? Lock n’ Load!”

Additionally, the Tea Partiers are trying to fundraise for specialists to come survey the land surrounding Gettysburg to see if it would be possible for oil drilling. “I want the government to drill here and drill now. What use is the surrounding land? It’s just a bunch of farmland. Seriously, the Civil War ended like 100 years ago, can we move on? No one cares about the battlefields,” said Oolong.

Future plans for the club include an invitation to Sarah Palin to give the commencement speech for the outgoing class of 2010, as well as an ad campaign to attract new members. While the ever popular “tea bag them before they tea bag you” slogan is the current front-runner for their upcoming campaign, club members are looking to branch out to such slogans as “Communists are Democrats in a hurry,” and “Mainstream Media, Hollywood – Guilty of Treason? Yes, They Are!”

“We just want people to know that there are other options besides socialism. We are patriots for the true America,” said Gray. “It’s a really great, non-partisan organization that welcomes anyone that’s willing to conform to our ideals.”