Conservative Leadership on Campus in VA

On Wednesday, our trip took a turn to the right. That's right, some campuses are on the right, and there are some right of center organizations working to impact America's college campuses. My day began by visiting The Leadership Institute. At LI, I gave a talk to about 65 of their field reps who are going out all over the country to helps students "Fight the Left" on college campuses. My talk was simply to inform them of ISI's educational resources and how they can benefit. There was certainly a lot of energy in the room, and I saw some good ISI alums among the LI field reps, including Ryan Sorba (Cal State-SB), Shah Smith (Portland State), Travis Ratliff (Cal State-Bakersfield) and others.

While I was at LI, Kenneth was over at George Mason University's School of Law meeting with a couple of ISI Faculty Associates. In the afternoon, we set up a table at the law school's activities fair to do some outreach for ISI. We ran into a few people who had been involved with ISI as undergrads and were excited we were there. But, we introduced ISI to a bunch of first year law students. GMU law is a very conservative law school, both among the faculty and the students, so we were making a lot of friends quickly.

Later in the evening, Andrew Lamar had set us up to speak at a College Republicans meeting at Marymount University, a Catholic liberal arts schools in Arlington. Not exactly a conservative school, but about 40 CR's turned up for their first meeting of the year. Andrew, Kenneth, and I all gave talks about ISI and the some of the students seemed excited.

On Thursday, Kenneth and I ventured out to the conservative meccas of Christendom College and Patrick Henry College. Both are very small schools (400 and 300 students respectively). About 80% of the students that attend each college were also "home schoolers". Both schools are religious, though Christendom is an orthodox Catholic school and Patrick Henry is well, a pretty fervent evangelical Protestant school.

At Christendom, we met up with a number of ISI Faculty Associates, professors who got their start with ISI while students, including Dr. Robert Rice who said he was involved with ISI "since 1964" when ISI was still called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. He was participating in a meeting with the ISI Group at Christendom, the "Cincinnatus League." Kenneth and I planned our visit to be at the lunch time gathering (which takes places once a week during the semester). These students are reading the ISI Books title, J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth by Professor Bradley Birzer. Kenneth and I were completely impressed by the meeting and the deep intellectual thought that the students brought to the discussion of the text. It simply demonstrates the great education they are all receiving at Christendom and their appreciation and love of learning. This is a group of students who get a fine education all day long, but then meet once a week to get an "extra amount of education" among themselves to cultivate their own intellects even further.

From Front Royal, VA, we drove about an hour to Purcellville, VA where Patrick Henry College is located. Once there, our ISI Campus Representative and ISI Group leader, Zac Gappa, set us up a table on campus and sent out an email to all 300 students on campus to come meet the representatives from ISI. We talked to ALOT of students. I'd say more than 50. And, while we already have a good 50-100 members from PHC, an additional 30 or so new members signed up. The students seemed very excited about ISI and all we have to offer. And, why shouldn't they? They should all be members and I simply hope they will all get more involved in some of our more elite programs, such as the honors program and applying for graduate fellowships and taking part in our essay contests.

That evening, we went to dinner with our ISI Group at PHC, the Alexis de Tocqueville Society." While at most schools, the ISI Group is the conservative group, I would argue (and they would too) that at the very conservative Patrick Henry College, this student initated academic forum is the most liberal group on campus. However, when these students leave campus, they are still seen as very conservative. It's just a different campus. They are all very impressive students and everywhere I go, when I mention the ATS to random studnets from PHC, they always tell me, "they're the most well-respected group on campus." That must be why I have such a high opinion for PHC students - it's because I work with the most well-respected among them!

On Friday, Kenneth and I met with a student from George Mason University (the main campus in Fairfax this time). He was probably the most impressive guy we met all week and we're really excited to help him make things happen at GMU as he ventures into his senior year. He wants to bring principled conservatism to GMU through lectures and a book discussion club. GMU is not necessarily a "conservative" school, but it has a fairly conservative leaning student body. There seems to be a lot of potential for ISI there.

Northern Virginia seems to be a great recruiting ground for ISI, but also a great ground to cultivate some of the seeds we planted this week. After going to 9 schools and one conservative organization (LI) in just 5 days, and driving over 1,000 miles, we were not ready to sit in 4 hours of traffic in the pouring rain of what was left of tropical depression Ernesto. But, alas, our bellies were full with Chipotle and our minds had been impacted by the best students the Commonwealth of Virginia has to offer. We got back home late on Friday night, but it was a really inspiring week.