Conservatism at Brown

I used to joke that the number of students in the Young Communist League at Brown outnumbered the students in the Brown College Republicans group. Yet after coming to campus and seeing life first hand, I have learned a sobering fact: this is not far from the truth. Hopefully the fact that Brown is a liberal place will not shock you. In fact, some argue that Brown is just a progressive place and since all colleges and universities are becoming increasingly liberal, we are just riding the wave and keeping up with the trends. Whatever the case may be, there are still several facets of this nasty liberal nature that bothers me.

At a recent meeting of Brown College Republicans, a group of which I am a proud member,a young female came to our meeting and simply asked the group, “Why would all of you come to Brown if you were conservative and you knew it was a liberal place?” It is this exact type of, for lack of a better word, ignorance that I see all the time at Brown – and it bothers me. To put it simply, what does Brown’s political atmosphere have to do with my choice of where I want to receive my education? It is this thought-process that I feel continually reinforces the idea that the liberal way of thinking is correct, and that conservative thought is not only wrong but also has no place at Brown – something that is far from the truth.

It is not only the students at Brown that have some misguided notions of their liberal tendencies. While there have been no official surveys done within the last few years, the number of registered Democrats compared with the number of registered Republicans within the administration is something to the effect of 30:1. And from my own personal experiences there have been multiple classes, not related to politics in any way,shape,or form,in which the professors went out of their way in almost every lecture they gave to be critical of the current administration and its policies. It seems that certain parts of the faculty do not grasp the idea that some people may take offense at this type of behavior, something that I find odd on such an overly sensitive campus as Brown’s.

I was almost nearly as shocked when I heard a faculty member tell me a story about how one of his colleagues treated his slight conservative leanings. This story came up in a casual conversation after I proudly mentioned that I was a member of the Brown College Republicans. He told me that he, being the smart economist that he was,was fiscally conservative yet,in regards to social issues, liberal. Long story short, he ended up voting for President Bush in the 2004 election. A few weeks afterwards, he recounted, a colleague of his pulled him aside one day and exclaimed,“I heard a nasty rumor about you that can’t be true! That you voted for that awful man Bush!” The professor told him that he did after which the colleague left in a huff.

These three stories show the good, the bad, and the ugly of the liberal nature at Brown. A certain level of ignorance of conservative thought among the students is one thing, among the interactions of the students and faculty is another, but that it runs all the way up to the private interactions of the faculty suggests that the entire system at Brown is so far left that there is no tolerance for any dissenting thought.

Please be clear in what I am pushing for. It is not the fact that Brown is a liberal campus, because lets face the facts: Brown is known as being a liberal campus. It is instead the intolerance shown toward any conservative thought on campus that really bothers me. Now before anyone starts to consider transferring due to this seemingly insurmountable prejudice against anyone who might have a second thought on whether or not the government has the right to use capital punishment or any other conservative thoughts, there have been significant inroads made recently.

While I will not bother you with the specifics of how the conservative movement at Brown was resurrected,trust me when I say that when this magazine was first published there was no place on campus for it. Simply that you are reading this demonstrates that progress that has already been made. Furthermore,with the continued passion of certain individuals, and anyone else who feels passionate enough, there can be even more progress.

What I envision for Brown is simple; just tolerance and the acceptance of conservative thought, rather than a swift rebuking of it. I want our school to transform into one where a girl would not muse about why conservatives would want to come to Brown, or one where professors are accepting of their colleagues’ political views,or one where professors are not allowed to use a lecture as a soapbox upon which they can spew political nonsense. These goals may seem frivolous, but when one examines the campus as a whole from a conservative standpoint, their achievement would create a shockingly different campus.

Brown is an awesome place, and I know that when I finally leave here I will have nothing but fond memories. Yet I do feel very passionately that more intellectual diversity will only benefit Brown, thus elevating it to another leave of greatness, which will benefit everyone at our University.