On Monday, February 19th (yes, President’s Day – if I was back “in the office” this would have been a day off, mental note), I spent the day at the University of Dallas with various members of the ISI Group there, manning an ISI table in the student center. We recruited new members for both the campus group and for ISI’s national organization. Later that evening, 10 members from the campus group joined me for dinner at an off-campus establishment to discuss the group’s current activities and future goals. On my last visit to U Dallas (April 2006), there was no ISI Group. So, we had an ISI soiree and a number of students expressed interest, most notably Michael Baker.
A year later, the group is off and running, thanks mostly to Michael’s efforts. Around 15-20 students have been attending meetings regularly and they are working their way through Russell Kirk’s Redeeming the Time. UD faculty members have been instrumental in leading the group through some of the essays. The group also plans to add a service dimension to the group, so that their ideas about cultural renewal do not stop at the end of a page, but instead extend to people in their community. Michael mentioned getting the group involved in the activities of Habitat for Humanity, of which he has been a part of in his home state of Louisiana.
Also on my last visit to Texas last year, I had met several students from Southern Methodist University at the 2006 Young Conservatives of Texas State Convention. After those students attended a workshop I led on how to start a conservative campus publication, they went back to the campus and formed one! They have published ten issues and have just applied for membership with the Collegiate Network. The paper is a small newsletter called The Mustang Post. On this year’s trip, I was able to go back to this campus and visit with the culprits: Reed Hanson, Andy Hemming, and some others.
We put together an ISI soiree. Only about 6 or 7 students attended, but I reminded them that a movement is not just about numbers, in fact, history has been made by small numbers of people and I recounted the biblical idea of a “remnant” that Albert J. Nock points out to us in his Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. According to Nock, even one person could carry on a tradition. So, I told them, “be a remnant!” They’re doing a great job at SMU, where right now they are in a big fight to get the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Apparently about 150 of the faculty signed a petition against it. My thought: who wouldn’t want a Presidential library on their campus! Another example of partisanship over education.
During my time in Dallas, I had the opportunity to get together with another former ISI student and former LI field rep, Brian Bodine. He is now a grad student at UT-Dallas and he met up with me two evenings in a row to discuss the latest in the conservative world. It was also good for him to meet and get reintroduced to the students at SMU. Brian has quite a bit of experience leading conservative groups from his time down at UT-Austin with those other culprits, Brendan Steinhauser and Charlie Ganske.