When Geeks Rally

Perhaps too filipant a post for just after Tisha B'Av, but it's too good to resist.

This week, an acquaintance was telling me about the crazy rally he held during his college days. These were not Vietnam rallies or anything like that, they had to do with a certain issue specific to the college (he swore never to publish anything about this, so I'm trying to keep it vague), so that the rally ended up being lead solely by the intellectuals and the goody-goodies.
The results were hilarious. The night before the big rally, they realized that they had no idea how to run a rally and ended up calling a more controversially minded friend for instructions, then spending the night making up slogans that they could shout (What do we want...When do we want it? NOW!), drawing up posters for people to wave, etc. The next day they decided they needed a musical instrument, so they rounded up a giant drum that none of them knew how to play and dragged a card table across town (he didn't have his driver's license at this point) for a speaker to stand on. While their speaker failed to inspire the crowd, someone wandered over and began to pound the drum. He had no idea what he was doing of course, but the noise attracted a lot of people who wandered over to see who was the idiot pounding the drum. At which point one of his friends revealed an unsuspected talent for rabble-rousing and whipped the 150-ish people crowd into a frenzy. Since they had promised to finish the rally in time for class (this was all during club hour, I kid you not), they brought the whole group to the Dean's Office to present their petition, filling the office and flowing onto the couches, but removing their shoes before the steps on any furniture. They then presented the petition the Dean's secretary, he not being present, put their shoes back on and went to class.
Being myself a geek, I often wondered how I would handle a situation like that. And now I know- Politely, studiously, and hilariously. But in the end, the geeks won.