I Was Wrong about Liberal-Arts Colleges

I severely underestimated the alienation and personal costs for residential right-leaning students at these schools.

I should be disrespectful of Yale if I did not credit her with molding the values and thinking processes of the majority of her students. Many of these, of course, withstand Yale’s influence even while living in her cloistered halls for four years; and many more, in the course of future experience, learn to be first skeptical and then antagonistic to the teachings of some of the college professors they once revered.

— William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale

A s the newest Buckley Fellow, I think it’s only proper that one of the first pieces I write should have a kinship with that great man’s God and Man at Yale, if only reminiscent of a rotund burl on the family tree.

But you’ve not found here an attempt to replicate the original, as it requires neither revision nor contemporary facsimile. I invoke the example because Buckley was capable of adoring his alma mater while also excoriating its manifold afflictions, emotions shared as I consider the academy and conservatives’ relationship with it.

Last summer, while an intern at NR, I suggested that young conservatives would enjoy a net benefit from attending left-wing institutions, and that we should be “chivalrous, intelligent warriors” during our tenures at whatever school we call home for those years.

But I was wrong about the perceived benefit. Or at least not entirely correct.

The flaw in my original piece is primarily one of personal oddity. A late-20s, Navy-vet student, I would leave the last class of the day at 4:20 p.m., kickstart my Suzuki FA-50, and motor homeward, where a loving wife, social stability, and a broader life waited. This is not the reality for most students, and I should have been more aware of how lonely and miserable existence within politically hostile environs can be.

I severely underestimated the alienation and personal costs for residential right-leaning students within these schools — schools that do not want them but will gladly take their tuition money — costs that I observed in friends and peers during the final year of my undergrad instruction at Lawrence University, a small liberal-arts school just like so many others in the Midwest and Northeast.

It took a friendship with a freshman and the observation of a pro-life group’s torturous multiyear application for recognition to grasp this — hardly a sparkling endorsement of my observational skills but helpfully illustrative of a young person’s plight at such schools.

I met Jack over LinkedIn. An incoming freshman, he had noticed my Lawrence ties and NR internship and wanted to learn more about his future school. A New Jersey kid with an Evangelical background, he was understandably concerned about the university’s purported leftism. I reassured him, with words I would use in the column mentioned above, that, whatever unpleasantness might arise, it’s good for one to suffer and develop as a thinker and Christian in trying places. After all, I had done it for three years at this point, and, while occasionally uncomfortable, there had been minimal adverse effects. Would it not be the same for him?

Unfortunately not. We would meet for coffee most every Wednesday, starting after he came to campus for “Welcome Week.” Personally, having gone from the O2N2 plant of the USS Carl Vinson to the start of school within four days, I never took part in those activities but was familiar with the concept. In the Navy, we called classes for the newly arrived “Indoc” — short for indoctrination. You have to give the military credit for this one, they didn’t faff around with innuendo. To aid my flickering memory of the first time he told me about it, Jack recently recounted the Diversity Training segment. The presenter

spoke like a 1920s populist talk show host. He said all of these things about how America is racist, murderous — its origin is murderous and imperialistic — how even though he’s married he can still be gay. All throughout the entirety of the talk, there were people [students] shouting and yelling across the room, people raising their fists, responding to his statements to the end and shouting things like “Black Lives Matter.” It was one of the most disturbing things. [The speaker] then said, “You can get a free copy of my book and a picture with me.” As soon as he was done, I saw five people run up and slide on the stage to get a photo op with him. It was almost demonic.

For the older commuting student, the above would be a humorous account for the dinner table conversation in the evening. My wife and I would chuckle at the ridiculousness of 18-year-old activist types, and then quickly forget the matter. But it can be frightening for a young man or woman, who has no escape from peers that were almost instantly formed into an ululating mass, especially when so new and emotionally overwhelmed. Before a single class was ever held, these Welcome Week events organized by the administration set the expectation, intentionally or not, for what a Lawrentian is to believe and how he is to act.

It is thanks to these morning coffee meets with Jack, who to his credit ran immediately for a position as a class representative with the Lawrence University Common Council (LUCC), that I became aware of the second example of why it may be best to avoid an institution such as mine. The student government unapologetically stonewalled a pro-life group’s recognition and funding as a student organization.

The short of it is that in October of last year the student government put every bureaucratic hurdle it could in the way of LU Pro-Life to delay recognizing and funding the group — something it had not done with similar political groups of a left-leaning bent. From nitpicking about poster wording to demanding a “sustainable purpose,” LUCC was hellbent on exhausting the small group of students who wanted to form the group.

Weeks ago, when a new LUCC president finally voted through the pro-life group, others on campus deployed arcane bylaws to overturn the decision and send the issue to the university president — with the implicit assumption that the new president would bend to the mob. My initial October columns about the matter can be read here and here, with further writing produced this May when the overturning thrust was attempted. Readers of the pieces will note my growing exasperation with the illiberalism, dishonesty, and hostility from the campus Left.

But I remain torn on the question of what young conservatives should do. A university such as Lawrence is bettered by a smattering of conservative students, whose attendance there provides them formative education in leftism and prudence. Yet I fear that the burden is too much for many and can lead to defeatism or reactionary impulses. “After all, if the Left is openly abusing institutional power for their ends, why shouldn’t we?” one might ask.

The solution may well be what Buckley described those many years ago: “Preliminary to endowing such future leaders of this country we have some obligation to speculate as to the direction in which they will lead us.” In other words, don’t give money to schools with which you disagree, whether the payment is tuition, endowment money, or Buddy Bucks (a defunct savings program for kids at my childhood bank).

This suggestion may sound especially rich from a guy who attended Lawrence on the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, effectively using taxpayer money to pay large sums to the school. However, as I said, I’m an irregular student, and my time at Lawrence allowed daily insight into how the Left thinks and argues and revealed the deep chasm between the liberalism of the faculty and the progressivism of the student body. Sorry to say that the trend leans far from moderation.

For the college applicant, ask yourself whether a progressive liberal-arts school offers enough to make it worth the challenge. It’s not all bad, but you will be tested, and there will be classes where you’ll not want to speak for fear of your classmates outing you as a conservative. If you start at one but find it unfeasible, transfer. Fortunately for Jack, and unfortunately for us at Lawrence, he stayed only for the fall before transferring to Liberty. There he has met with success and exudes a contentment that was noticeably absent during our morning chats.

For the concerned parent, know that college rankings don’t matter in any meaningful way. “Grad schools matter as much as undergrad doesn’t” is one of the most valuable bits of advice I received from a well-educated friend and confirmed by professors. If your kid is in a midlevel school where she excels, she’ll almost certainly go further than at a high-level school where she’s miserable.

For the veteran or adult student, I recommend the liberal arts. Being a commuter at a liberal-arts school exposed me to thoughts, professors, and opportunities that I couldn’t have had elsewhere. Moreover, the professorate prizes your experience, as they teach a much younger class on average than at larger state schools and community colleges.

To end, let me echo Mr. Buckley’s conclusion in the foreword, quietly murmuring Lawrence whenever he offers Yale:

Finally, I must ask indulgence for the frequent references in the text to myself and my personal experiences at Yale. If there were a way out, I should willingly have taken it. But a great deal of the material that I have summoned, and of the insights that I have received, has been a result of personal experiences. To avoid mention of these would be not only coy, but restrictive. For these reasons I ask patience; and further, I approach my thesis with profound humility and with the desperate hope that even those who disagree emphatically will acknowledge that I could have no motive other than a devotion to Yale, a recognition of Yale’s importance, and a deep concern for the future of our country.

Author’s note: My email is label@nationalreview.com. If you ever find something you disagree (or agree) with me about in the coming months or would just like to say “hello,” please never hesitate to send me a message.