Right side up

With their ranks swelling on college campuses, young conservatives say they are revolutionaries fighting a liberal establishment. They're meeting in D.C. this week to promote the cause.

They've come to hear words of wisdom from Ferris Bueller scene stealer Ben Stein, funkadelic music promoter Reginald Jones, bomb-throwing bombshell Ann Coulter, and the impossible-to-squelch G. Gordon Liddy, among others.

They're here to tour Capitol Hill, hear a lecture on "the failures of feminism," and hang out with others of their kind.

The 187 high school and college students attending the 25th Annual National Conservative Student Conference that began Sunday and ends Friday are on the cutting edge of a trend.

College students today are more conservative than their parents, numerous studies have shown, on matters of sex, drugs, war and taxes - and getting more so. But the trend hasn't caught up with college curricula and faculties. It's not easy being a right-leaning pupil in a left-leaning classroom.

To hear the conference attendees tell it, liberal orthodoxy in the halls of learning is enforced with a rigidity reminiscent of China under Mao.

"Most professors are liberal. They try to preach to you, and it's hard to disagree with them because your grade is on the line," said Lisa Stewart, 20, a junior at Bentley College, a business school outside Boston.

The curriculum is "biased to the left" at the High School of the Arts in conservative Orange County, said Ruthie Bornstein, 15. "There's not enough about American history, but you have to learn about Islam and women's studies to pass the Advanced Placement test."

To sharpen their minds and learn to argue their viewpoints the activists, admitted after submitting a resume and an essay along with $375, have converged at a student center at George Washington University.

On Monday, they heard former World Wrestling Federation champion Warrior tell them to trust logic over feelings and to battle "the armies of hammerheads" who espouse moral relativism.

"Those who think make the world work. Not those who feel," said Warrior, his bulk encased in a black suit, his wrist tattoos peeking out from white shirt cuffs.

His speech was called, "There's a Conservative Chip on My Shoulder - Go Ahead, Try to Knock it Off!" Needless to say, no one did.

"We offer activist training for students who are battling to get their ideas out," said conference director Melissa Moskal.

"It isn't easy for them. Students have been dragged before campus judicial committees for their beliefs. Some have been failed in courses for disagreeing with teachers."

Hayley Skousen, 17, a senior at Irvington High School, moved to New York from a Christian prep school in Florida and was "shocked at the way teachers bash people like Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan, with jokes and slurs and sarcastic remarks."

She tries to speak up in class "to let students know there's another side," Skousen said. The conference, she hopes, will "help me better articulate my views."

Catherine Carre, 19, a junior at Pennsylvania State University, recalled how she got an F on an English essay when she wrote an argument against affirmative action in college admissions.

The Masterman High School graduate said she was able to raise her grade by persuading her professor to let her rewrite the paper. This time, she incorporated his pro-affirmative action views as well.

The lesson she learned, Carre said, was "to keep my mouth shut unless I know what the professor likes."

Carre, who has volunteered for Republican Sam Katz and interned for Democratic Councilman Angel Ortiz - "a great guy, although I joke that he's to the left of Stalin" - helped organize a troop-support rally on campus, she said. Flyers promoting the event were torn down.

Even so, or perhaps as a result, conservative groups are growing on campuses. While College Democrats of America has disappeared altogether from 20 states, its chapters dwindling from 500 in 1992 to fewer than 300 now, the College Republican National Committee has 1,148 campus chapters, and its membership has tripled since 1999.

Stewart, from Bentley College, said she's "against government control, but mixed on ethical issues like gun control and abortion. I'm usually a Republican, but would change if I liked someone better."

"I don't affiliate with either party," said Rob Maury, 26, a senior at Barton College in North Carolina, who plans to start his own business. He came to the conference, he said, as an antidote to the "rampant anti-intellectualism in popular culture" and "people who get their politics from MTV."

Daniella Alves, 21, said she agrees with the Republican party on "almost all issues" - except its failure to embrace environmentalism and animal rights. She'd like to help change that, said the sophomore social science major from Miami-Dade Community College.

"The only thing that makes a difference is people who view things through the lens of possibility," Alves said earnestly, sounding more New Age than Newt.

Studies have shown that campus conservatives are increasingly female and middle class. They admire Ronald Reagan and are more patriotic since 9/11.

They oppose speech codes, set-aside student government seats for racial minorities, and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender groups, and what they see as political correctness.

Increasingly, they are for school prayer and the public funding of church groups and against abortion, a recent study by University of California Berkeley and University of Alabama professors found.

More of them are hawks than doves, the Harvard University Institute of Politics reported in May, noting that support for the war in Iraq outpaces opposition 66 percent to 30 percent. The Harvard study also found that 61 percent of college students like the way President Bush is doing his job.

They aren't into casual sex, according to the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, which has been surveying incoming freshmen since 1966. Only 42 percent of freshman approve of it, down from 51 percent in 1987.

The questionnaires students returned showed that most of those at the conference learned conservatism from their parents, Young America's Foundation president Ron Robinson told them Monday.

So it was with Jennifer Richardson, 20, a junior at the "very liberal" Madison branch of the University of Wisconsin, where she is studying Middle East geography and Arabic. Raised by a liberal mother and a conservative father, Richardson, who aspires to be a U.S. senator, said she picked her father's philosophy because "it made the most sense to me."

The task of conservative activists, YAF president Robinson told them, is not to convert fellow students but to "awaken them to the fact that they already are conservative."

"Conservatives want to run their own lives," Robinson said. "Liberals want to run other people's lives and spend other people's money."

That message resonated with North Penn High School junior Ryan DuBois, 16, of North Wales, who came to mingle with "like-minded individuals."

DuBois, braces on his teeth and flip-flops on his feet, said he plans to return to Montgomery County to establish a Young Republicans club.

I just came by this. This is very true, and relieving. It slightly offends me that my politics are considered a form of rebellion, but that's what the hippie generation wants to think. I think a factor in the change of politics is that youth is surprisingly smart enough to see the mess their predecessors have created in the country and recognize that it's their job to clean it up. I hope our work doesn't get rolled back by another generation in a couple decades.

The lesson she learned, Carre said, was "to keep my mouth shut unless I know what the professor likes."... They oppose speech codes, set-aside student government seats for racial minorities, and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender groups, and what they see as political correctness.

It sounds like opposing speech codes isn't working too well there at the seat and soul of abrogating the freedom of speech. How often do the good professors use colorful terms like white trash, red-neck, double-wides, big hair, etc? Let's include "third world" a signifier suggesting colonialism and empire--in fact, I will hazard to suggest that that last term is gradually being phased out in favor of "developing countries" so as not to offend the sensibilities of those who may oppose a global economy.

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