This is almost so ridiculous I don't know if this is some sort of joke or not. If it turns out to be Onion-esque, well than that just shows how lowly I think of Rand Paul to possibly believe this.
GQ has the story - http://www.gq.com/...
What's truly interesting about Rand Paul and Baylor is not the issue of whether or not he graduated; it's what he did at Baylor during the two-and-a-half years he spent there. As I discovered in the course of reporting a story about Paul for GQ, he wasn't your typical Baylor student.
Much more after the jump
Baylor seemed like a natural fit for someone like Paul. Located in Waco, it's the world's largest Baptist University and has a long history of educating the children of prominent Texas conservative politicos. As the son of Houston-area Congressman Ron Paul, young Rand—or Randy, as he was known back then—appeared to be following in that tradition. But when Paul showed up in Waco, he didn't conform to type. According to several of his former Baylor classmates, he became a member of a secret society called the NoZe Brotherhood, which was a refuge for atypical Baylor students. "You could have taken 90 percent of the liberal thinkers at Baylor and found them in this small group," recalls Marc Burckhardt, one of Paul's former NoZe Brothers. Sort of a cross between Yale's Skull & Bones and Harvard's Lampoon, the NoZe existed to torment the Baylor administration, which it accomplished through pranks and its satirical newspaper The Rope. The group especially enjoyed tweaking the school's religiosity. "We aspired to blasphemy," says John Green, another of Paul's former NoZe Brothers
Can you pick out Rand Paul?
In 1978, the Baylor administration became so fed up with the NoZe that it suspended the group from campus for being, in the words of Baylor's president at the time, "lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious." During Paul's three years at Baylor, according to former NoZe Brothers, if the administration discovered a student was a member of the NoZe, the punishment was automatic expulsion.
I wonder how folks in Kentucky would feel about their senate candidate being a member of a group banned from Baylor for being "lewd, crude, and grossly sacrilegious". Now Paul was at Baylor from 1981-1984, so while the group was banned before he got there - the were still active as a secret society and still up to the same shenanigans.
While this isn't Bobby Jindal's exorcisms, and a lot can be written off to being a stupid college kid high on dope and alcohol -
The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."
Rand Paul obviously doesn't hold organized religion in much of any regard. I guess his Aqua Buddha would be the Flying Spaghetti Monster these days.
Read More http://www.gq.com/...
The NoZe Brotherhood does exist at least to the point they have a wikipedia entry- http://en.wikipedia.org/... and an official webpage - http://www.thenoze.org/... and even have a facebook page of members which of course is set to private.
UPDATE - TPM is reporting that the Paul Campaign is considering suing GQ. I really hope he does - make it a bigger issue and keep it in the press with no real shot at winning. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...