On Tuesday, eight graduate students at Yale University started a hunger strike in an attempt to force the university to provide better union benefits.
“Yale is saying that we have to wait, that bargaining would be too premature. They’re saying that because they want to game the legal system, file motion after motion,” Local 33 Chairman Aaron Greenberg told the Yale Daily News. “We’re saying, ‘OK, we’ll wait, but we’re going to wait without eating.’”
Later reports indicated that the students left for themselves a gigantic loophole in their “hunger strike”: If one of the participants gets hungry or sick, someone else can come and switch places with the “starving” protester. A former Yale student, Dimitri Halikias, posted a pamphlet about the strike on Twitter and acknowledged the hunger strike is really only “symbolic.” Halikias, who said the strike is “still inspirational” despite the loophole, later deleted the tweet from his account.
Conservatives across the country had a lot of fun with the Yale students’ “inspirational” attempt to force the university to provide better union benefits, but the College Republicans at the prestigious institution seemed to enjoy the absurdity of the spectacle more than the rest. On Friday, the GOP student group held a barbeque in close proximity to the hunger strike to mark the ridiculous event.
Needless to say, lots of liberals were outraged by the move. For instance, Vice politics writer Eve Peyser said the move was “gross” and “cruel.” Far-left editor at ThinkProgress Ian Millhiser called the College Republicans “self-entitled pricks.”
“Turns out the Yale College Republicans are exactly the kind of self-entitled pricks you would expect them to be,” Millhiser wrote on Twitter, along with a link to a scathing article about the barbeque.
Turns out the Yale College Republicans are exactly the kind of self-entitled pricks you would expect them to be.https://t.co/JQkQHQeiut
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) April 29, 2017
The Yale Republican group received a great deal of criticism during the 2016 election for refusing to retract its endorsement of then-candidate Donald Trump, even after tapes surfaced showing Trump making highly inappropriate comments about women in 2005.
Below is an image of the barbeque event held by the College Republicans:
Yale College Republicans barbecuing by union fast site pic.twitter.com/qf687cckxB
— gabrielwinant (@gabrielwinant) April 28, 2017
(H/T: Twitchy)