This post is my answer for why The Claremont Conservative deserves to win the blogging contest run by the America's Future Foundation (AFF). This year marks the second year that we were finalists for a $10,000 cash prize and we've had quite the run, with well over one thousand posts since September 2007.
The judges are as follows: Jonah Goldberg of The Corner and Liberal Fascism, Jonathan Adler of The Volokh Conspiracy, Radley Balko of The Agitator, Robert Bluey of RobertyBluey.com, Megan McArdle of Asymmetrical Information at the TheAtlantic, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, and Jennifer Rubin of Commentary's Contentions. [Simply to be judged by these panelists is an honor and I don't take it lightly and I'm thankful for the opportunity to hear their criticisms when the time comes.]
Together, these judges are to assess the following criteria on who should win:
Does the blog break news or offer in-depth coverage of major campus events? What is the impact the blog has on his or her campus? How can this be demonstrated? Does the blog effectively bring conservative and libertarian ideas to their college campus? Does the blog demonstrate originality in thinking and analysis? How regularly does the blogger post? How many comments does the blog receive on its posts?
As a self check list, let's go through them to see how well we are doing. We've had over 150,000 visitors from around the world since I started this blog, which has become, to quote an admissions officer, "a very useful tool" for students considering Claremont McKenna.
I've had a lot of fun becoming conservatism's bad boy on campus. On average, I post about once a day and sometimes a lot more. I've given tours to conservative students, written over twenty articles for The Claremont Independent, the conservative monthly that I now run, where I've written arguments against Bono and foreign aid, so-called "fair trade," free speech restrictions, Islamic extremism, Asian only school retreats, and bias against the military by Pomona's policies, among many others. Since I became associate editor of The Claremont Independent, we've grown our staff from around six to well over twenty and we show no signs of slowing down.
I've also written for CMCNation and I have written letters to the editor of The Student Life. I've defended conservatism/libertarianism on the message boards of The Forum (official school newspaper) and The Claremont Port Side (the left wing newspaper). My blog has been cited numerous times by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the local press and blogosphere, and I have been a winner of a Cato award. For all of my work, I have gotten jobs with RedBlueAmerica.com, The New York Sun, and the Kauffman Foundation, in part, based upon my writing.
There have been consequences for having the views I do. I was spit on at a Pitzer College dining hall, and have been called "evil", "fascist," "hatemonger," a "troll," "sadist," "psychopathic," and lest, I forget, "pudgy." I have been shouted down for asking questions of speakers on sister campuses and I have been accused of launching personal attacks when I questioned efforts on this campus to ban trays (in the hopes of reducing waste.) Apparently, calling people to task for what they write and say, is "attacking" people. My then-girlfriend was harassed for dating me with cat calls and on anonymous message boards, there were groups calling for her to break up with me. Worst of all, I have had my email hacked and a hateful email sent out to my entire contacts list. I have gotten dozens of pieces of hate mail. I suspect that many of these attempts were meant to discourage me or to get me to quit. It won't work. (In fact, little do those students know they're just giving me information for the book I plan to one day write about higher education.)
Unfortunately, it does work with many students. Some students have told me that they too would speak up, but they fear attacks on their personal lives, their loved ones, and their property. At Pomona College and Claremont McKenna nothing was done when left wing students defaced the property of conservative students who had the temerity to support McCain-Palin, but we'll get campus wide emails, pleding to identify the "perpetrator" if someone scralls anything on bathroom walls that could conceivably be considered an attack on a protected class on campus. [These so-called bias related incidents have been curiously down ever since we started putting them online, sending them to FIRE, and questioning their use of language. The campus dailies wouldn't say anything about it, so we did.]
This blog was intended to be a means of saying "no" to the Campus Left, whoever they might be, and to take the arguments to them, in real time. For too long, conservative and libertarian students have talked behind closed doors, always skirting away from any arguments that might offend someone enough to call an administrator on them.
It happens and so I'm proud to point out one of this blog's greatest victories -- reversing Pomona College's banning of David Daleiden and Kyle Kinneberg for having the audacity to ask tough questions of Women's Union visitor, Serena Josel of Planned Parenthood, during Abortion Awareness Week. The boys, following California state law on the videotaping of public lectures, used a camera to record her response.
Several weeks later, they were banned from all of Pomona by Dean of Women, Marcelle Holmes, who has something of a reputation for censorship on our campus. (She once greeted several football players after their breakfast time conversation and interrogated them. They dared to question a bias-related incident against the QRC.)
Through the use of this blog, the Facebook group set up by Kevin Vance CMC '08 and Adam D'Luzansky CMC '08, and contacting alums via email, we put pressure on the administrators to rescind the ban that was supposed to be in perpetuity (or at least until both David Daleiden and Kyle Kinneberg graduated.) It took only five days and forced the Board of Trustees to talk about what our administrators would do to safeguard liberty.
In the past, when we lacked the social networking tools to organize ourselves with alums and like-minded supporters, we could be pushed around. Brad Kvederis was forced out of Claremont McKenna for running a satirical newspaper, not too dissimilar from Claremont Confessions. In one of his newsletters he offended some girls for "sexual harassment" even though his speech was protected. (FIRE didn't exist at the time.) Kvederis was never allowed back on campus, even though he won his case against the college. To be fair, Kyle Kinneberg and David Daleiden's speech may have been smarter than the crass college humor of Kvederis, but it deserved to be defended nonetheless. No more Kvederises.
