From: kowan@ai.mit.edu (Rich Cowan) Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 13:52:39 EDT Subject: UCP: Conservative Campus Groups Recharge [Excerpted from _Guide to Uncovering the Right on Campus_, edited by Dalya Massachi and Rich Cowan. ISBN 0-945210-03-05. This article may be photocopied or distributed electronically at no charge provided that the article and this notice are included in their entirety. Copyright 1994 University Conversion Project. For the full 52-page guidebook which includes 38 graphics and 8 charts, please send $6 plus $1 postage to University Conversion Project, Box 748, Cambridge, MA 02142. Outside the USA the cost is $10. For info on memberships ($25/20/10) and a complete publications list, send e-mail to ucp@igc.apc.org or call 617-354-9363.] Conservative Group Recharge on Campus by Martin Boer, UC Santa Barbara After suffering a decline during the unpopular presidency of George Bush, conservative campus activism has seen a recent upsurge, galvanized by a President and an academy deemed by many to be too liberal. With the nation's reins currently in the hands of a Democrat, conservative student groups nationwide are taking the opportunity to regroup and solicit followers. This recent upswing of conservative activity was not born from the leadership of a Republican president and does not reflect the typical political attitudes of most students in the US. Rather, this activism is a reaction to what some students perceive as a flood of "liberal ideology" in education and government policy. With support from a myriad of foundations and institutions these conservative students have been able to create effective strategies and organizations that directly confront liberal policy-making, according to several conservative activists interviewed in mid-November by the Daily Nexus. The College Republicans (CR) are the college component of the Republican National Committee (RNC). The various campus CRs try to help elect Republicans to office at every level of government to defeat the "organized left" on their campus. The CRNC also provides campuses with complimentary posters, speakers, and "Fieldman Schools," - where young conservatives are extensively trained in politicking. There are 100,000 students involved with 1,1000 college chapters according to Fred Bartlett Jr., CRNC membership director and a recent graduate of Morgan State. "We have experienced such growth recently. Bill Clinton is the best thing that's ever happened to the conservative movement," he said. "He's our vanguard... he is so far from what college kids want that he's organizing us." Bartlet said that the party's prime focus on campus right now is to inform students on both sides of the issues. They will in turn realize that "Liberals are pro-ignorance, they don't want the truth to be known which is [that] if you tell people both sides, they'll be educated." The educated voter, Bartlett added, is "a Republican voter." Bartlett said he is particularly dismayed that organizations like Ralph Nader's PIRG's and the Gay, Lesbian and Bi-sexual Alliance continue to get funded by college student associations while the Republicans do not. Adam Ross has noticed this increase in conservatism at Stanford University, where he is President of the College Republican chapter. According to Ross, the organization now has an unprecedented 300 members after starting from scratch in early September. Ross says he does want to promulgate the Republican agenda but prefers to focus on local issues and elections where he feels his members can be most effective. "We worked very closely with local representatives in the 1993 state elections and in terms of local races we are going to do whatever we can," Ross said. Besides promoting the Republican Party's agenda, Ross edits a popular bi-weekly newsletter called Flip-Flops, where he cites the contradictions he sees in the promises between "Clinton the campaigner," and "Clinton the politician." Another young conservative, Marc Short, is the National Director of the Young America's Foundation (YAF) and a `92 graduate of Washington and Lee College. He says his 7,000- member student organization has a two-tiered mission for attracting new students. According to Short, students first wanted to get involved with Republican politics. Once they have been on campus for a while, they focus on academic issues like multiculturalism and work on conservative publications. As an offshoot of Young Americans for Freedom, an organization whose past leaders include New Right heroes Howard Phillips and Richard Viguerie, Young America's Foundation is designed to help students develop conservative political ideas and world views while in college. Currently the organization reaches 7,000 members through an extensive outreach program. During the Gulf War, for example, the organization visited many campuses to organize student rallies is support of the troops at their colleges. During his travels Short said there appeared to be "an active increase in conservatism because of Clinton." YAF not only targets university students, but staff as well. Short said the liberal political agenda is overtly supported by administrations and faculty at many universities. "During the presidential campaign, for example, Clinton was invited to speak on over 50 campuses, while Bush was only invited to 2 or 3." Another YAF program is the speaker's bureau which organizes and dispatches well-known conservative lecturers like Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Schafly, Barry Goldwater, and George Will to the college chapters. Working with this program has only confirmed to Short that "unfairness runs rampant in that the universities are always willing to set out money for a Jesse Jackson whereas they heck and haw over William F. Buckley." To help students keep "liberalism" out of the classroom, the organization Accuracy in Academia (AIA), was established in Washington D.C. A monthly newsletter, Campus Report, monitors what they deem to be incursions by the "liberal left" into the university. Currently AIA claims a membership of 200,000 on 1,500 campuses. Most of AIA's informatio-gathering is done by affiliated students who keep tabs on their professors by recording statements and collecting syllabi, reading lists, and course descriptions, according to executive directory Mark Draper. Draper said he joined AIA after the University of Charleston failed to re-hired him as a lecturer in English and Composition, a decision he claims was based on his conservative views. According to Draper the AIA defends the campus from any political incursions: liberal or conservative. But because of a "historical accident," AIA is currently only targeting the "liberal bias" of academia where, they estimate, 85% of professors are liberal. When the AIA organizes on a campus they recruit good students who have solid grade point averages and are willing "to seek out the little Stalinists in the faculty," according to Draper, "and to stand up and challenge the assertions that have nothing to do with the course materials." Students for America (SFA), located in Raleigh, North Carolina, is dedicated to advancing conservatism, patriotism and Judeo-Christian values. SFA states it has 6,000 members on 175 campuses, who are "the mirror image of the liberal student activists in the sixties," according to the group's statement of purpose. After recent visits to campus chapters Executive Director Jonathan Roberts has seen a clear increased interest in SFA because now "there's a policy maker making liberal policy." Before heading the national office, Roberts joined the SFA chapter at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill because he felt they were the only organization on campus involved in discussing the issues. "With the College Democrats and Republicans, party politics get in the way of issues," Roberts said. The current issue of choice is the Clinton health plan which, Roberts says, "We are opposed to for the most part." Roberts claims most conservative students "are not your kind to get involved in public policy making," but rather opt for careers in professions like medicine, engineering, or academia. His organization is now encouraging students to work for established newspapers and "get out of the closet, into professions that liberals have capitalized on in the news media," he said. In Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute sponsors Campus, a student-run conservative magazine that claims distribution on 1,200 campuses. According to Joe Galli, a recent graduate of Houghton College and ISI's Director of Field Services, the biggest foe of conservative students is not Clinton but the "movement for political correctness." "The academy is definitely out of hand," Galli said. "Faculty and administrators have gotten hold of it. There seems to be a nation-wide speech code and sex code regarding scholarship." With the appointment of Sheldon Hackney, former president of the University of Pennsylvania, to the director of the National Endowment of Humanities, Galli claims ISI's task of combating "PC" becomes even more difficult. Worse yet he says, "academia is already very involved in politics, they are concerned with bringing national politics to campus. They want to conform students with their ideologies." Though Galli is not pleased with college administrators, he contends students have been especially receptive to Campus and its writings. "The feedback has been great," he says. College students are very aware of PC and are tired of it. These freshmen that have to join the sensitivity seminars denounce it as the trash that it is, a politically incorrect way to learn." The Madison Center for Educational Affairs in Washington D.C. sponsors the Collegiate Network, a consortium of conservative magazines and newspapers operating on some of the nation's premier academic campuses, including the seven Ivy League Schools, MIT, Stanford, Georgetown, and Berkeley. According to Tanya Daley, the Collegiate Network Program Officer and a 1992 graduate of Tufts University, this program was first started when students at Chicago were unhappy with how news on their campus was covered. Because starting a paper is hard work, Daley claims "the students that set up these papers are usually the cream of the crop." She added that "we therefore tend to have a large proportion of Rhodes Scholars." Editor-In-Chief of the Stanford Review, Lisa Covan, praises the Network, stating that it "has given us the opportunity to receive grants and has legitimized us." "The Collegiate Network is the premier conservative organization and we are currently considered to be the best paper in the network." But more than just generating visibility the network helps in editorial content. "They help us form our opinions and plan conferences," Covan said. "The network ties all the conservatives together." With a weekly circulation of 8,000 and no paid advertisements the overhead of the review is considerable, but Covan claims she continually receives financial support from both ISI and Republican Stanford alumni. "Stanford is in a bubble where all white males are bad and minorities are so oppressed," Covan lamented, but once students graduate "they see this is not really true and they support us with donations." Covan was interested in working with the Review because "at Stanford our daily newspaper is very liberal, by the columnists they select and by the stories they put on the front page." As an example of this bias she cited the favorable coverage of a recent gay marriage allowed in the campus church. Aman Verjee, production manager and a regular columnist for the Review, does not envision himself going into journalism because "to be a journalist you have to be an idealist and it's tough to be a conservative idealists. Besides," he added, "conservatives don't have the sexual libido that liberals have, where they can almost sexualize every issue." Another well-known campus magazine is the Dartmouth Review, which Oron Strauss, its editor-in-chief, claims is noticing an influx of interested new conservatives who are turned off by a "liberal academia." According to Strauss, the latest freshman class seems more influenced than ever by political correctness, multi- culturalism and political sensitivity movements. He added, "They are educated and ready to deal with it." While internships at the White House are currently not feasible, Strauss is certain that political skills will still be in demand on the Right. "After college I am sure there are opportunities out there in organizations, think tanks and radio shows." While students that identify themselves as fiscally or socially conservative are still a minority on today's college campuses, the resources available to these activists might make them effective in winning over considerably more converts. Strauss is hopeful. "There are also lots of strong conservatives running for office. I am very optimistic about what our generation is going to do." Martin Boer is a staff member of The Daily Nexus, a non- partisan student paper at the University of California, Santa Barbara in which an earlier version of this article appeared.