Below is an excerpt from Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative. The author of this forthcoming book is Travis Rowley, a local Rhode Islander, and former captain of the Brown football team. Rowley describes Out of Ivy as a “damaging tell-all of Brown University, and harsh appraisal of radical liberalism.” After revealing to readers that Brown’s athletes were the most conservative students on campus, and therefore the most disliked, Rowley attempts to explain why that was so.
Why They Hate
Prejudice and victim-hood were the rallying cries of Brown’s special-interest student groups. But the student with the only legitimate claim to campus discrimination was the athlete. Strikingly, you won’t find a single grievance or complaint, only a mysterious absence of a touchy-feely support group to compensate for the player’s plight and predicament.
Brown University’s contempt for its athletes was often proudly pronounced. In a special Freshmen Orientation edition of the Brown Daily Herald, designed to familiarize first-years with the campus specifics, the paper declared, “Our football stadium is two miles off campus, and we like to keep it that way.” Within this Ivy fortress of tolerance, for some reason the only unacceptable lifestyle was to be spending your afternoons kicking a ball around.
It sends chills down my back to imagine the horrific ramifications of voicing to the Brown community, “The Hispanic Machado House is two blocks off campus, and we like to keep it that way.”
We were the campus idiots. No doubt, we were the Ivy League’s “Flyover Country.” Noticeably right-wing, and therefore lazily regarded by liberals as stupid; a group unworthy of intellectual engagement. But judging from my own experiences, my classmates never struck me as more intelligent than my teammates. In my eyes, the Campus Left had miscalculated when they decided that our conservatism was a result of inferior intellect, rather than an athletic lifestyle that taught us to despise leftist ideals.
There is no doubt in my mind of the connection between athletic conservatism, and athletes’ vilification. We were a proud and blatant campus minority, wearing Gap and Abercrombie, playing sports, occupying the off-campus bars, and dominating fraternity life. Oh, how they hated us.
Ironically, Brown’s athletes were the most likely to be found implementing the leftist creed of acceptance and diversity. Walk onto Brown’s campus and ask where the Ratty is. The Ratty, believe it or not, is what students call the cafeteria. When you enter the Ratty, you will notice the dining tables ethnically divided. Black students sitting with other black students. Whites with other whites. Asians with Asians. Now, this wasn’t a strict rule, but it was reliably commonplace. There was one group, however, that you could always catch exercising diversity dining. The athletes.
Jokingly one day, answering one of my black teammates who had just asked me where he could find the fresh apple pie that I had on my food tray, I told him, “Oh, it’s over by the silverware. You know, right next to the black section,” referring to the side of the cafeteria that was occupied by African-American students. Both he and I laughed, not because it was a stunning observation, but because of my insensitive candor toward a previously unspoken truth. In other words, it was the University’s speech codes that actually made something so obvious, so funny.
Not that this type of honesty was rare from Brown athletes. As I said before, conservatives were much more comfortable with themselves, unashamed of who they were. We were much less concerned with always saying the “correct” thing.
During the spring of my junior year it came time for the fraternities to elect their officers for the following fall semester. Brown’s Greek life was dominated by the athletes, and Theta Delta Chi (Thete, for short) was predominantly occupied by members of the football team. It was the “football house.” Well, members of Thete had elected one of their black fraternity brothers as next year’s president, and their annual custom was to officially induct that person by putting him through some sort of hazing. While being elected president of anything is always an honor, this tradition almost dissuaded Thete members from wishing it upon themselves. The practical joke that was played on the elected was typically unpleasant. And this spring, my teammates decided to kidnap their new executive, tie him to a chair in the middle of the quad, and paint him…white.
Pause for a second, and think about that.
If more people (or perhaps certain people) had seen this episode, then you can be sure that there would have either been expulsions, a heated controversy, or some sort of campus upheaval. Certainly, someone would have had some explaining to do. Fortunately, this politically incorrect event, for the most part, slipped under the campus radar. I had only heard about it because my friends had organized and conducted the “paint incident.” One black female student did however happen to walk by, and witness the horror. Later on she made her repulsion known to my teammates as she informed them as to just how appalled she was at their insensitivity, and how far back they had just set the advancement of African-Americans.
Insensitive? On Brown’s campus, the “paint incident” was much more than insensitive. It was a mortal sin. It was exactly the type of thing that could have caused a riot, earning my classmates appearances on national news programs as they protested the atrocity. When I was told what they had done to their new president, I was shocked for only that reason. My teammates had not heeded the warnings of the Ivy social order. They had risked it all for the sake of tradition, laughs, and brotherhood.
Events such as this are how Brown’s athletes distinguished themselves from the liberal pack. While most College Hill conservatives kept quiet, the Brown athletes were more candid and visible. A highly self-confident group more difficult for liberals to gag.
And we were colorblind. If there were any racists on campus, it certainly wasn’t us. So confident were my teammates that they were not bigoted, that they defied Brown’s campus correctness in the middle of the quad for all to see. They stared every speech code, every meeting on diversity, and all of Brown’s sensitivity training right in the eyes and said, “This is our friend, our president, our teammate. And we’re painting him white.”
I don’t know if anyone other than another Brown conservative can appreciate how hilarious I found this story to be. At first, I was knocked right off my stool. Stunned! Dazed! But only because I couldn’t believe the spectacle they dared to create. But I understood all of it. I knew these guys, and where they were coming from. They just weren’t concerned. To them, it was funny and innocent. They had elected their friend as next year’s president, and they would do what they had always done. They would play a practical joke that was relevant to their own personal relationship. If the Campus Left had a problem with it, they could all go to hell.
The defiance of political correctness. This is why athletes were despised so much. Because we were honest.
As for liberals. Truth meant nothing to them. Diversity meant nothing to them. An assault on all that is traditional was the Left’s agenda. They worked for a new order. A new religion. But they were the most disingenuous people on campus, actually maligning those who dared to exercise their mantra.
