Sonny M, I respect your point of view and also noted the social positions as less than my definition of 100% conservative in several cases in the article, but I see it a little differently, perhaps more glass 3/4-full if you will. These students are self-identified fiscal conservatives; that's at least half the battle in my opinion because it makes a judgment about the ideal role of government. Then, they are pro-life, which puts them, at least in my opinion, squarely within the conservative camp, which I like to think of as allowing for some difference of opinion from some theoretical median "conservative." Most libertarian-conservatives and social-conservatives (and other types), despite frequent disagreements, are conservative enough and have enough overlap with this median conservative to belong in the conservative camp. FR is a pretty argumentative forum, and we come in many different flavors of conservative, but, like these students, we all identify ourselves as conservative. The identification is important; it means we have at least some common ground and are working towards it.
I think the fact that they are probably mostly from the north may make their spectrum of "conservative" a little wider than one from the south or midwest. I don't really know. I do know that with some groups of people, I'm a radical right-wing nut, while on FR or among certain Texas Republicans I occasionally and almost (key words) feel like a RINO. Yet I proudly call myself a conservative, just as these students do.
I expect that while my core political beliefs and attitude about the role and scope of government will probably stay the same throughout my life, I may migrate rightward or leftward (or libertarian-ward or theo-con-ward or neocon-ward or as National Review would have it metrocon-ward or crunchy-con-ward) on an issue or two. Since supposedly people usually move right with age, that might happen to these students on those social issues. For now, they sound like courageous warriors deep in enemy territory in the common struggle you and they and I fight against the left. And they are actively working to spread their conservative message, whether it's 75% or 90% or 100% conservative in your or my opinion. So, if they agree with most conservatives most of the time, and feel more vehemently about issues on which they hold conservative positions than those about which they are indifferent, I say more power to them.
Ignoring that part of the party or not even learning about it, what it means or why its there, can actually hurt the causes. Many people drifted democrat, because of the social issues, they don't understand the conservative side except thinking that it wants to make them live a certain way, in college, there were college kids who believes the republicans wanted bigger government to control them and there lives (idiot lefty teachers were big on brainwashing). The social issues are going to be inherently linked with the fiscal side, they need to learn to see how they are linked and why.