Middle America

On Tuesday morning I drove about 2 hours south to Jacksonville, IL to meet with several members of the ISI Group at Illinois College. This school is virtually in the middle of nowhere, but only 30 minutes or so southwest of Springfield, IL. I had literally drove through the Land of Lincoln. I have been to this campus before to meet with Dan Sauerwein, who started the group about a year and a half ago or so, and he’s now graduating and leaving the group in new hands, younger hands. We had a brief, but good meeting and talked about some new ideas that the new leadership is going to consider. They seem to want to take the group in a new direction, a direction that will hopefully involved more people on campus and convey to them the importance of joining and being a part of such a group.

These last two campus visits (to the University of Illinois and Illinois College) have reconfirmed to me that you must have good leadership to lead these type of groups and good leadership can most clearly be seen in being able to pass down that leadership. As a leader, you have to groom the leadership that will follow you in order that your group and its mission does not end on your graduation day. College groups are tough to keep going and it’s even tougher when good student leaders graduate and move on with the rest of their lives. Leo kept the conservative cause active, John stayed persistent in keeping the idea of a group going and Dan also left good leadership behind to follow in his footsteps and perhaps all these student leaders following in their footsteps will keep up the great motivation and willingness to lead the conservative cause on campus.