I’ve been active in the political community at Stanford for nearly 4 years now. As a conservative, when I arrived on campus my freshman year I was surprised to find no active conservative groups on campus, except the Stanford Review. So, it was at the beginning my sophomore year that I joined the intrepid Senior Travis Menk in founding the Stanford College Republicans and the Stanford Conservative Union. As leaders of a minority opinion on campus, we had to put up with a lot of flack from liberals. But that was always welcomed as good, political fun.

In my experience leading the College Republicans from 2002 to 2004 and as a writer for the Stanford Review, I’ve found most liberal students on this campus to be extremely nice, thoughtful people. That is not to say, however, that I haven’t had some very interesting experiences with those students who describe themselves to be ‘the far left.’ I’ve gone from shouting matches with anti-war protestors, to having dinner with great people wanting to hear another point of view at Synergy and Columbae, to having a very excited debate with a liberal friend in an apartment in Moscow. But I’ve had two favorite incidents with liberal groups on campus which I like to retell. One, involving a labor dispute at Stanford, happened nearly 2 years ago and the other, involving the debate over the filibuster, happened last week. Though I will once again resurrect the fury of these groups, I will relate to these incidents here in order to illustrate two important desires I’ve had for the Stanford political community: the need to not take things too seriously in the game of student politics, and the need for students to think independently of what political spin doctors tell them.

I’m Going on a Hunger Strike—Now Where’s that Burrito?

Nearly two years ago students from the Coalition for Labor Justice went on a round-the-clock hunger strike in the Main Quad in order to pressure the University administration to adopt a ‘Code of Conduct’ for University workers. These students dreamed of becoming martyrs and icons for the labor movement, and it was this dream that kept them strong during the weakness caused by the lack of food. After a day of fasting, they were told they must relocate their strike to White Plaza to be in compliance with University policy. This really made them angry, because, to paraphrase one of their supporters, “it’s too stressful in White Plaza with students walking by all the time.” You would think they could put up with the stress of students looking at them if they were strong enough not to eat for several days. Yet, the relocated in accordance with the University’s demands, and their dream lived on.

Sadly for them, their dream was about to come crashing down due to their lack of appreciation for irony. On the second night of their fast, I was hungry so I walked to the Treehouse to eat nachos. It was very late at night—I believe it was somewhere around 1 a.m.—so most students were either asleep or doing work in their rooms. I was sitting in a booth by myself watching the television and eating my nachos when I heard a loud group of about 6 students walk in and order food. I thought nothing of it. After all, I was in a restaurant and, as far as I know, it is normal for people to order food in restaurants. I continued watching the television and eating my nachos until this group of people got their food and walked in front of my view. I was simply stunned by what I saw. I recognized these students. In fact, I recognized them from White Plaza. But I didn’t have to know who they were to fully appreciate what I was witnessing for one glaring reason: each and every one of those students was proudly wearing a large button that read “I’m Fasting for a Code of Conduct!”

This was too good to keep to myself, so I immediately returned to my room and sent a good-humored e-mail to the College Republicans chat list just to let them know what I had just witnessed. I had no idea what kind of storm this ignite. Within minutes I received dozens of supporting e-mails mocking the Coalition for Labor Justice for their hypocrisy. The next morning a reporter from the Stanford Daily contacted me because they were going to run a story on it. This meant sure doom for the fasters. The next day the story ran and I became Public Enemy #1 for the leftist groups on campus. The Coalition tried to ward off the criticism from the student body by claiming that those students I witnessed eating in the Treehouse were “not the main fasters.” Apparently, there were two groups of fasters—the ones that fasted and the ones that just wore buttons claiming they fasted. It turns out, I saw the latter group.

Unfortunately, it was too late and the damage was done to their campaign. No one took them seriously anymore, and they blamed me for it. A column ran in the Daily from a usually liberal source, mocking the Coalition for defining a fast as going to the Treehouse to get a burrito. Even the leaders of The Stanford Progressive joined in criticizing them. So, despite their repeated assertions that the Coalition would not break the fast until a ‘Code of Conduct’ was adopted, they quit the following day claiming victory because President Hennessy agreed to consider their request. To this day, I am still despised by a few of the students who ran that campaign, though I wasn’t the one who made them look silly by wearing a “I’m Fasting for a Code of Conduct” button while simultaneously stuffing my face with a burrito. And to this day, they still do not have the “Code of Conduct” they wanted.

Because Howard Dean Said So, That’s Why!

The main disappointment I’ve had with some political Stanford students is that they rarely do their own, independent research on issues of great importance. Instead, they’re completely willing to be influenced by partisan talking points, which rarely address the issue clearly, fairly, or truthfully. Anything these talking points say, they accept. This applies to both Democrats and Republicans.

A great example of this was put on display in White Plaza last week. The Stanford Democrats staged a ‘Save the Filibuster’ event in which they had a student in White Plaza talking—or ‘filibustering’— all night and all day. This was a clever idea they stole from Princeton students (though the Princeton group lasted more than 2 weeks, while our Democrats lasted only 2 days). I was interested to hear what they had to say, so I stopped to listen to some of these students speak and, generally, it was quite boring. But, then again, what do you expect out of a filibuster?

Contrary to what the Stanford Democrats have been telling students (including me), Senate Republicans are not proposing an end to all filibusters, nor are they trying to change anything in the Constitution. What the Republicans, led by Majority Leader Bill Frist, are proposing is a change in a Senate rule that would reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on judicial nominees from 60 to 51. If you had been listening to the Stanford Democrats, you would have thought Frist was trying to eliminate a section of the Constitution. Unfortunately for their argument, the filibuster is not a constitutional requirement—the rule for cloture was enacted at the request of President Woodrow Wilson. In fact, Democrats, led by former Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd, didn’t think the filibuster was such a good idea when they were in power, so they decided to change this very same procedural rule to reduce the votes required to end the filibuster from two-thirds to three-fifths. So, basically, the Republicans are trying to change a procedural rule that is less than 30 years old in order to allow votes on judicial nominees.

Anyone who has followed the debate on the issue knows this. But for the 98% of people who haven’t followed the debate, the information Stanford Democrats are using is extremely misleading.

I decided it would be fun to see just how much these Stanford Democrats knew about the issue they were debating, so I decided to approach one of them and ask them a few questions. The student I approached was reading from the Federalist Papers. I quickly decided not to interrupt him: If a liberal is actually going to read the Federalist Papers and cite them in an argument about the Constitution, you let him do it because he promptly ends up defeating himself in the debate. I didn’t have the patience to wait for the next speaker so I decided to ask one of their supporters my questions.

I posed as a person seeking information on the issue and trying to get some materials. I first asked why we should oppose allowing a vote on Bush’s judicial nominees and got the packaged answer I was expecting: “They’re extreme, far-right judges who have shown hostility to civil rights and the rule of law, so we really don’t need that.” Naturally I followed by asking if he knew of an opinion with which he disagreed that any of those judges wrote. Of course he couldn’t, but he’d gladly refer me to the Democrats’ talking points website. I wasn’t asking this guy to recite the legal reasoning or any specifics of a case—I was just trying to see if he could name a concrete reason he opposed these judges other than that he heard they were bad from Howard Dean. He went on to explain that Bush was trying to stack the judiciary with far right judges and that America deserved better nominees.

“You can’t possibly think William Fichtner is too far right, can you?” I asked, exasperated.

“Most definitely,” he quickly responded. “Fichtner is far too extreme for mainstream America and is known for using his judgeship for conservative activism.”

Actually, he’s not known for any such thing. In fact, William Fichtner does not exist as a Bush judicial nominee. He’s an actor from the movie Black Hawk Down. I just tossed his name in there to see if this guy would be honest and say he had no idea what he was talking about and that he was just towing the party line. When I told him who Fichtner was he blushed with embarrassment and speedily responded that it didn’t matter because anything Bush did, he was against. It didn’t matter what the facts were, he was against it.

This mistake just proved my point that some of these students have little idea what they’re arguing and that they’re more than willing to follow Democrat talking points without doing their own independent thinking on the issue as long as it’s in opposition to President Bush’s position. Unfortunately, they’re helping spread this false information to credulous students.

At Stanford we’re expected to think independently and come up with intelligent arguments in favor of our position. Sadly, this isn’t happening with the Stanford Democrats’ latest display. I would have been angrier, but the look of surprise and embarrassment on the face of the William Fichtner opponent was too good to put me in an angry state. Embarrassment, however, won’t stop them from being demagogues and spreading false information to students who are too ready to disagree with anything President Bush does, and that’s why we need conservatives to keep them in line.