For several hours on December 17, conservatives announced that their darkest fears of persecution had been realized. A pious student had been beaten by liberal brownshirts simply for speaking out in favor of traditional morality. If the student were gay or black, conservatives reasoned, the entire student body would have erupted in massive protests. Instead, the administration stood silently to the side. Princeton graduate and conservative writer Michael Fragoso told the Sun, "There would rightly be outrage had the student been part of some other minority on campus."

At last, an incident surfaced that proved what movement figures had long maintained: campus conservatives are a minority that suffers far harsher oppression than the blacks, Latinos and gays who form the "politically correct" vanguard of liberal identity politics.

But on the night of December 17, as the conservative firestorm was being whipped to a frenzy, there was another development...