College campuses today have a reputation for being hostile to right-leaning students. As a recent graduate who became a conservative in college, I can’t say I entirely agree. Yes, we’re outnumbered, and yes, our ideas often get disregarded. Being a conservative might be socially disadvantageous. But if you want to know where the real political energy is on campuses, it’s on the right.
The recent killing of Charlie Kirk, and the flood of interest in his organization, Turning Point USA, has drawn attention to college students’ appetite for conservative ideas. I was not particularly inspired by Kirk in my personal ideological transformation as a student at Stanford University; Turning Point didn’t have much of a presence on campus while I was there. But one principle he stood for—the celebration of debate, of a marketplace of ideas—is what first appealed to me about the right.
I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021 as a progressive from Los Angeles, where most of my peers and I had thought of conservatives as, essentially, evil. At a club fair, I signed up for the Stanford Young Democratic Socialists of America, as well as the leftist magazine, The Stanford Sphere. I hoped to live in one of Stanford’s co-op houses, communal living spaces largely focused on left-leaning activism.
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