Princeton students attending the debates between the USG presidential and vice-presidential candidates at the Frist Campus Center display wall were presented with a shameful display of childlike bickering and name-calling last night. The debate, which observers had hoped would be an enlightening experience, had to be suspended after one candidate literally slung mud at his opponents. Apparently, Josh Anderson '04, the current chair of the U-Council, smuggled a bucket of brown, gooey mud into the debate and proceeded to hurl globs of the vacuous muck at his opponents each time he was posed with a question.

"I'd heard of mud-slinging in politics before, but I always thought that it was just a figurative of speaking," said a startled Miri Spanatov '05. "Back in my home county of Ukraine, we cherish democracy, so this was a, how you say? Shock."

Over 150 spectators were forced to flee the area shortly after the debate began, many in tears. The candidates were evidently not the only targets in Anderson's line of fire: several observers reported being hit with large globules of mud after they asked the longtime USG member to stop his antics. "I told him to chill out with the mud-slinging, you know?" explained Matt Grabler '05. "I said that his campaign had totally gone negative and that he should stick to the issues, but that was probably a mistake," said the muddied Grabler.

When USG vice president Sonya Mirbagheri '04 echoed Grabler's request to stick to the issues, Anderson replied "what issues? This is the USG! We don't do anything!" Shortly after his outburst began, Anderson was forcibly escorted away from the debate by five Frist Campus Center employees, two of which reported receiving mud-related injuries.

Once Anderson had been removed, things look like returning to normal. Unfortunately, vice-presidential candidate David Khalil '05 soon set things back on the wrong track by calling his opponent, Brooke Stoddard '05, "a pansy with a pansy name and pansy policies". "That's when things got really out of hand," recalled Davin Simmons '03. Stoddard refrained from offering a polite response and instead dove on top of Khalil in an apparent attempt to strangle him into unconsciousness. The debate turned into an all-candidate brawl, where Anderson's leftover mud once again made an appearance.

"This is a sad day for democracy," sighed Professor Maurizio Viroli of the Politics department. "May God help us... if these uncouth goons... are the future of the Princeton undergraduate polity."

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