As part of the TEDx talks at TU last week, President Steadman Upham announced that he had invited Texas Senator Ted Cruz to speak at the University. Everyone thought it was a joke, but no one was laughing when Cruz showed up Friday riding an oil derrick and trailed by sixteen trained elephants spraying crude oil all over the steps of the Reynolds center.
As the longest-serving solicitor general of Texas, Cruz had a lot of advice to offer young people just starting their careers. Cruz offered none of this advice, insight or even entertainment during his forty-eight hour TEDx talk. He spent the six hours discussing the etymological differences between the words “buffalo” and “bison.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent his entire talk screeching and waving money around. The State-Run Media’s political analyst said, “It was unclear how Cruz’s TEDx talk differed from his usual campaign speeches.”
Elias Brinkman / Collegian
When asked about the talk Freshman Communications major Nick Holesby said “I honestly have no idea what that was. I kind of zoned out after he got to the Polish Bison.”
Senior Physics major Anna Mips said “I think he thought he was filibustering. There was a whole four-hour stretch about the history of the alphabet where he was just reading off a huge stack of paper. I don’t think he even knew what he was saying.”
After hour forty, Cruz just started waving around bundles of money and chanting the word “appletini” over and over again. He also looked like he really needed to pee. The chant dissolved into incoherent mumbling somewhere around hour forty-six.
When asked why he had played such a prominent part in shutting down the government during 2013, Cruz lit the bundles of paper on fire, mounted his horse and galloped off stage and into the sunset.
