Little is known about the life of Rand Paul, the GOP candidate for Kentucky's Senate seat, before he hit the political stage. But GQ's Jason Zengerle went digging into the libertarian Paul's time at Baylor University, Texas — a school from which he did not manage to graduate — and unearthed some details about Paul's extracurricular activities, such as "kidnapping, drug use [and] sacrilege," says Dan Amira at New York. "How could the Paul campaign possibly explain all of this to its many conservative supporters?" But the Paul campaign is threatening GQ with legal action over the piece, which it calls "drive-by journalism by a writer with a Leftist agenda." GQ responded that all details were "vetted, researched, and exhaustively fact-checked" before publication. Here are the 5 most interesting revelations:
1. Paul joined a secret society for liberals
Although his father was already a prominent GOP politician, Randy — as he was then known — decided to join a banned and decidedly liberal secret society at the conservative Baptist college. Known as the NoZe Brothers, the group was "sort of a cross between Yale's Skull & Bones and Harvard's Lampoon," according to Zengerle. According to one former member, 90 percent of the school's "liberal thinkers" were in the Brotherhood. The official punishment for being a member was expulsion.
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2. Paul and his "brothers" mocked Christianity
"We aspired to blasphemy," one NoZe Brothers contemporary told Zengerle. Student pranks designed to annoy the school's strictly religious administration included the singing of mock Christian songs such as "Rock Around the Cross," and running ads for local strip clubs in their satirical publication.
3. A drunken Paul tried to dig up a time capsule
Baylor never discovered that Paul was a member of the NoZe Brotherhood, but "Paul certainly seems to have done enough stuff at Baylor that, had the university known about it, he would have gotten the boot," writes Zengerle. One such stunt involved Paul and a buddy attempting, "after a few too many beers," to dig up a 1945-era time capsule buried in the center of the school's campus. They succeeded only in knocking over a nearby monument.
4. A stoned Paul "kidnapped" a fellow student...
In another stunt, Paul and a fellow NoZe Brother allegedly tied up and blindfolded a female student, took her to their apartment and tried to force her to take hits from a bong. "It was some kind of joke," the woman tells Zengerle, adding that Paul and his friend had been "smoking pot," and had not tried to hurt or harm her in any way.
5. ...and tried to get her to worship false idols
When their captive refused to smoke pot, Paul and his friend drove her out to a creek in the Texas countryside. There, they asked her to bow down and worship their god, whom they called "Aqua Buddha." The woman doesn't say whether or not this entreaty was made seriously, but tells Zengerle: "At Baylor there were people actively going around trying to save you... worshiping idols was a big no-no."
Read the entire article at GQ.
