You can’t buy the kind of publicity the University of Colorado Boulder says it’s getting from the upcoming Republican presidential debate, though some might wonder if you’d want to.

On Thursday, the two candidates who perch atop most national GOP polls threatened to boycott the Oct. 28 debate, adding to the poor publicity that piles up seemingly daily lately as CU struggles to explain why only a handful of students will be allowed to witness the proceedings.

What’s more, a huge demonstration by Latino organizers was also announced this week, promising to fill a nearby field on campus with as many as 10,000 activists vying for attention while the national and international press are in Boulder.

After debate sponsor CNBC, the cable business network, announced the ground rules for the debate, the third held for GOP candidates, unconventional candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson penned a letter to the network laying down their own ground rules and suggesting that they might skip the proceedings altogether.

First, the pair said, they want a debate that lasts no more than two hours, including commercial breaks — as opposed to the three-hour marathon that slogged the airwaves last month at the Reagan Library — and they want the network to restore the opening and closing statements afforded the candidates at every other debate held so far this cycle.

It galls the frontrunners that the five Democratic candidates, who just had their premiere debate earlier this week in Las Vegas, were able to deliver what amounted to “infomercials” with their openers and closers, while CNBC is proposing that the more crowded Republican field jettison the self-promotion and get straight to the debate.

“People realized we got the short end of the stick when the Democrats had a two-minute opening and a 90-second closing, so they had three and a half minutes to a 15 million person audience of an infomercial,” a source told The Hill. “They get a commercial, we get ‘The Hunger Games.’”

Carson, for his part, will be in the area no matter what. Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute this week announced he will be delivering a speech to students the day after the scheduled debate as part of a lecture series featuring conservative leaders.

The outcry from CU students and even more loudly from the left has also ramped up this week even as university officials keep repeating that the 10,000-seat Coors Event Center will still only be able to seat 1,000 in the debate audience — because it’s a television production, not a sporting event.

“The fact is, no one buys the excuses debate organizers have offered for locking the CU student body out of this debate,” said Progress Now Colorado’s Amy Runyon-Harms. “We all know they could easily accommodate CU students in this mostly-empty stadium if they wished to: just like they can accommodate Trump’s requests to structure the debate to his advantage if they choose… These terrible decisions will only worsen the resentment felt by students and further damage the reputation of Colorado’s flagship university.”

To top it off, an event featuring Latino leaders is set for the hours leading up to the debate at Farrand Field. Organizers said they hope as many as 10,000 will attend the voter registration campaign to “mobilize Colorado’s Latino, immigrant and allied voters.”

info@coloradostatesman.com