Rand Paul's Aqua Buddha: Another Baylor Mystery

By Richard Connelly Tue., Aug. 10 2010 at 5:03 PM

Categories: Political Animals

Aqua Buddah, God -- it's all good

Rand Paul, son of our own Ron Paul and -- hard as it may be to believe -- a serious contender to become the U.S. Senator from Kentucky -- (well, maybe the "Kentucky" part is not that hard to believe) is in the news today because of a brief item from GQ.

It addresses his college years at Baylor and includes this anecdote, about Paul and another student:

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.'

Hmmm...not odd at all.

Why is it not off? Because it's Baylor. The whole school is based on oddness.

Fanatical worship of some crazy sounding Supreme Being? Check. To be fair, they don't bow down before some completely idiotic and unbelievable thing like an "Aqua Buddah"; instead they bow down to some bearded guy up in the sky who promises you paradise if you do everything He says down here. Which includes donating to Him. And Baylor, for that matter.

Treating women like second-class citizens? Let's just say Paul and his pal aren't the only ones thinking that way on the Waco campus. Baylor has its fair share of men willing to play the Ephesians 5:22-24 card ("Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands....")

Forcing someone to take bong hits? Hey, it was the `80s, man. You had to have been there, about 20 years behind the rest of America.