BEST. PROTEST. EVR. (not)

Today Washington state higher ed students walked out of classes in protest of tuition increases.

... Well some walked out.

Most just did what they normally do but talked about the protests while doing it. Which is a victory of sorts for the organizers of this statewide protest. Not bad for planning the whole thing in 36 hours.

It was kind of comic actually. But hats off to the people who came out. At least they care enough to DO something.

You could tell there wasn't a lot of organization. This guy seemed to be their leader. Nobody really paid attention to him.

The knot of (I'm guessing here) 100 people milled around outside the CUB yelling, "Lower tuition is our mission!"

Then they walked back and forth through the CUB a couple of times and dispersed about 1:45 p.m.

To give you a context of how many people were there, here's a picture of when I first showed up, about 12:45 p.m.

One thing that surprised the heck out of me was seeing Butch the Cougar.

I did a double take. He didn't show up until near the end, when the protesters were making their second meandering pass through the CUB, but he posed for pictures with the protesters and was there doing his whole "Butch" thing.

I guess WSU was pissed about it but everybody could tell he wasn't there as a part of the rally. He was just doing what he usually does with large groups of students.

After I got over my initial shock at seeing him I thought it was kinda cool that he was out there at something important, among the students.

The photo below is my favorite from the whole afternoon. There where are few people who looked like they were protesting the protest.

Or, at the least they were making fun of it.

They set themselves apart from the rest of the protesters and never mingled with them. They brought these signs that merely stated what was taking place to their right.

You can't argue with their signs though, there was a protest right there.