Campus Conservatives in a Sea of Blue

On Monday, I drove from South Bend to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois to make my first ever visit to the University of Illinois. The city is very nice, but somewhat urban surrounded by a mostly rural area. I came here to meet with our new ISI Group at the University of Illinois, started by John Bambenek. John has been trying to start this group for more than a year - and despite some challenges, he hasn’t given up. In fact, what he’s done is constantly register all the conservatives he knows for ISI membership. He’s met many more on thefacebook.com, where he’s "networked" them all together and convinced them of the importance of joining ISI where they can find the intellectual resources to defend their conservative cause on campus.

Over time, this formula has worked to bring together like-minded conservatives who, while interested in activism and furthering the conservative agenda both on and off campus, are actually more interested in educating themselves on principle and guiding themselves with the intellectual rigor (that ISI provides) to become more informed on why they are conservatives and to find an academic alternative to their Leftist-dominated curriculum.

About 8 or 9 students and myself met up for dinner and we had some really great conversations. It was like having an ISI Group meeting and getting into some aspects of intellectual conservatism. Sometimes on these visits, I like to ask the students "which conservative (dead or alive) do you most identify with?" or "which conservatives’ ideas most resonate with you?" Surprisingly enough, a few of them said Barry Goldwater! This is not a name you hear in popular circles very much any more. But, it was cool to hear. I think there was a fan of Buckley as well, among others.

After dinner, John, myself, and 3 of the guys from the CN paper, The Orange and Blue Observer (2 of which were there at the meeting), went out for a couple of beers at a local pub. We continued our conversations which went on for several more hours. Leo Buchignani, who has been the Editor in Chief (and conservative campus leader) for the past 2-3 years at the University of Illinois, joined us for beers. I have met Leo several times before at CN conferences. Great guy - this guy want to conquer the world - he’s ready to take on the Left on the Illinois campus all the way to China.

What is great about right now, is that Leo has built up a large group of conservative activists, utilizing the resources of the Leadership Institute for the grass-roots political activism on campus, and the Collegiate Network for "spreading the conservative message" through the print media. Now, John and his new ISI Group is going to groom all of these conservative activists to be intellectuals. Perhaps they will be "scholar-warriors" in an activist sense of the "warrior."