Free Distemper by Beth Saulnier Page B

recorded sounds
     of screaming animals, presumably at the slaughter. Lovely.
    The campus cops started barking into their walkie-talkies, calling for backup before they were drowned out by the animal screams.
     The marchers finally drew up in front of the building and spread themselves at various points on the front steps with the
     precision of a ROTC drill team. As it turned out, there was a good reason they weren’t chanting. They had their mouths covered
     with duct tape, which made for dramatic effect but was going to hurt like hell when it came off, and they were wearing identical
     T-shirts that said STOP VIVISECTION .
    That was it. They all just stood there and stared straight ahead with those horrible recordings blaring one on top of the
     other, out of synch and sounding like teatime at the abattoir. I caught sight of my friend Nicky from the NPR station in Binghamton,
     who was trying to set sound levels on his recorder, and he gave me a look that translated as
what am I supposed to do with these nutbags
? I shrugged back. Nothing happened for a couple of minutes, and I was wondering how long the standoff couldpossibly go on when one of the campus cops had enough. He was a guy in his fifties, red-faced from carrying an extra sixty
     pounds, and as he stepped from behind me I heard him say four words crowded into one.
    “Sonofabitch.”
    He ran up to the closest kid with a tape player and went to pull it out of her hands, but she held on. He might have chosen
     a woman because he thought she’d be easier to handle, but if he did he chose wrong. He tried to grab it again, and she wrapped
     her arms around it tighter, all the while staring straight ahead. He tried to pick her up and the radio along with it, but
     she collapsed into a heap on the steps and became total deadweight; somebody had obviously given them a primer on civil disobedience.
    “Turn off that goddamn noise!” he shouted, and was about to move on to the next nearest protester when two other campus policemen
     intercepted him. They talked to him for a minute and the three of them seemed about to walk away when the first cop threw
     them off, whirled around, and rushed a skinny kid perched on one of the middle steps. He took a swing at him but the kid was
     too fast, and when the punch didn’t connect the cop lost his balance and nearly toppled over. But he recovered and grabbed
     the radio with more agility than you’d think he could manage, lifted it over his head, and pitched it down the stairs. One
     out of four screaming pigs went quiet, and most of the crowd looked like they wanted to kiss the guy.
    He started toward the next radio, his face even redder than before, but all of a sudden he stopped and just keeled over, splat.
     The EMTs—who always seem to be lurking on the sidelines at such occasions—leaped into action,giving CPR and loading him into an ambulance. The protesters never even looked. I was starting to write the lead in my head.
A Benson University public safety officer collapsed during a campus protest in front of a blockaded Dew Hall Wednesday morning.
     Student activists, clad in identical anti-vivisection T-shirts and wearing duct tape over their mouths, stood around like
     a bunch of twits while the old guy croaked
.
    The dean of students showed up with a megaphone and talked about how the protesters’ concerns would be addressed, but first
     they had to disperse and let them free the people locked inside the building. It was a lovely speech, but nobody could hear
     it over the recorded screams of animal torture. The vice president for research picked up the megaphone and started calling
     for “civil discourse,” but by then the Gabriel city cops were involved and there was no more Mr. Nice Guy. Working in pairs,
     they handcuffed the protesters with plastic strips and carried them to a bus, which whisked them away, boom boxes and all.
     So much for getting some quotes.
    The doors were still locked by the time I left