For some young conservatives, college starting to look right

By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES Members of Western Washington University's College Republicans express themselves last Friday in Bellingham.

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"It hadn't been four weeks, and people were already protesting," he says. He saw tables where students proclaimed themselves Socialists; he'd thought that was something people called you as an insult.

He told himself: "I have to find people who think like me."

That's what led him to UW's College Republicans and ultimately to Right Turn, the conservative, student-run monthly magazine the UW senior edits. Its mission: to combat what he calls mainstream media's left-wing bias and to show conservative students they're not alone.

Nationwide, conservative student groups are on the rise, most prominently the College Republicans, whose national committee, as reported in yesterday's Seattle Times, has raised millions of dollars through aggressive and misleading fund-raising tactics targeting the elderly.

Local officers expressed surprise and dismay at the news, describing fund-raising efforts done independently of the national group, with which they keep loose affiliations.

"That's a bit disturbing," said University of Washington senior Nick Dayton, UW chapter president. Seattle University chapter president, Ashley Hayes, added, "We don't do things that way."

Political activism among young voters has grown in the past year, partly the dust kicked up in the march toward a major election. But leaders say the rise of conservative student groups in particular is the result of more young people seeking alternate voices in traditionally liberal environments. .

"We thought we needed something to counter what some of the professors were saying in class and what students were advocating," says senior Scott Phillips, vice president of the Seattle University group.

Going for edgy

This fall, the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, which guides young conservatives toward journalism and public policy, set out to double the number of independent, right-leaning student groups nationwide. Before the campaign, the 25-year-old organization counted 218 such groups; as of Oct. 22, it claimed 374, most on separate campuses.
 
Conservative viewpoints, the institute's Jim Eltringham says, have long been ignored or misconstrued by campus publications. "The current generation has said, 'We're not going to complain about the media; we're going to be the media,' " he says.

Statewide, conservative groups dot nearly every campus. They include publications such as Right Turn, clubs favoring Republican candidates or single-issue advocacy groups.

In addition to providing campaign-related support, College Republicans hold support-our-troops rallies and hold debates with Young Democrats or other left-leaning groups.

"I like to think we're talking to young people who may not have formed their views and convincing them our views are right," UW's Dayton says.

With inspiration from books including Dinesh D'Souza's "Letters to a Young Conservative," their activism has become more edgy and controversial.

Some sponsor conservative films, fabricate cemetery scenes to protest abortion or offer "professor-watch lists" naming those thought to treat classrooms as political bully pulpits.

To protest race-based admissions policies, UW's conservatives last year held an "affirmative-action bake sale," with discounted pastries available only to students of color. College Republicans at Western Washington University hope to hold a similar event this school year.

Feeling lonely

Right Turn, with 10 staff members and 400 donor/subscribers got off the ground in 1999 with help from the Leadership Institute, which provides startup funds for fledgling conservative groups and publications. In this month's issue, Donovan's editor's note says the rise of Fox News "inspires hope that perhaps the network news outlets may one day begin moving back toward objectivity." Other articles, written with a conservative eye, address Social Security, education spending and the war on terrorism.

Two weeks ago, about 70 students turned out to watch the third Bush-Kerry debate at a viewing party sponsored by UW's College Republicans. The group has been around since the 1980s and has a current mailing list of nearly 1,000. Some packed Bush's biography, "A Man of Faith," under daily planners or wore George Nethercutt T-shirts under hooded pullovers.

Whether favoring lower taxes, traditional marriage or Bush's war on terrorism, conservative students say they've felt isolated before finding the refuge of others who think like they do. If support comes from faculty, they say, it's often in whispers: We're here, but we're not really here.

In class discussions, "you feel ganged up on," recalls former UW student — and Right Turn co-founder — Anton Bird. But it's not just fellow students they have to contend with, conservative students say; it's professors.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, UW political-science major Donovan says, one instructor began the class by showing left-wing political cartoons to the 150-plus students in her lecture hall. Donovan says he sat with some friends — eventually dubbed "Conservative Row" by classmates — who often raised their hands to challenge what they saw as the instructor's liberalism.

UW College Republicans president Dayton, a regularly contributing columnist to the UW Daily last year, says that after writing an editorial supporting traditional marriage, he was confronted by an angry reader who then followed and loudly taunted him for an hour. Other groups describe upended information tables, members followed home as a form of intimidation and swear words directed at campaign signs in dorm windows.

At Seattle University, senior Phillips says that when he watched the third Bush-Kerry debate at Seattle University's student center, he was surprised to hear students openly mocking the president. "Maybe they thought everybody was like-minded," he says.

Fellow Seattle U student Alicia Kephart paints a picture of "closet conservatism" on campus, and at last month's annual campus street fair, some student passers-by were surprised the College Republicans exist.

In all, 28 students joined the group's mailing list — compared with 10 last year — including spiky-haired senior Dean Rollolazo, browsing the fair. His friends give him a hard time. "They're like, 'You're gonna ruin the country.' That's what they hear in the media. I don't think George Bush would have led the country this way if there wasn't a reason."

Though he admired Bill Clinton's presidency, he says, "The Democrats have been too liberal. Some of our morals are diminishing."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com