There are three rules to being a Republican at Northwestern:1) You are a minority.2) Sticks and stones. 3) Defend yourself, because you’re on your own, kid.Believe it or not, political conservatism is definitely here on campus, but it doesn’t exactly manifest itself like Obamamania. It exists in “McCain = COOL” flyers on the ground, the piles of the Northwestern Chronicle by building doors and the lone McCain-Palin bumper sticker in the parking lot. This is Obama country, and NU is as blue as it is purple. Professors freely make anti-Bush cracks during lectures, Barack Obama ’08 pins are like the new leggings and the College Democrats beat the College Republicans in attendance numbers each year.For GOP students, it’s a hard-knock life. “It’s tough at times, not having anyone on your side,” says Communication senior James D’Angelo, president of the College Republicans. “People are constantly calling you out on your points, and you constantly have to defend your views. When you’re on an extremely liberal campus, of course ‘Republican’ is a dirty word.”D’Angelo and other NU conservatives fit the rightist stereotype in some senses. A lot come from conservative families and grew up red states. Many subscribe to commentators such as radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh, cocktail dress-wearing polemicist Ann Coulter, or Hannity & Colmes’s Sean Hannity. Almost all watch, prefer and adore conservative media darling FOX News. George W. Bush, they will argue, is not that bad. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is “awesome.” But that is where the stereotype ends, because parrot-like, knee-jerk Republicans they are not.The vice president of College Republicans identifies with the Republican Party but is voting for a libertarian. The founder of Students for McCain is a registered independent. Within the groups, the students can be further broken up into members of the extreme religious right, neocons, fiscal conservatives, pre-9/11-Democrats and libertarians, D’Angelo says.”A lot of liberals at this school expect your typical hometown Republicans who just quote a lot of pundits,” says William Upton, the Weinberg senior who is D’Angelo’s second-in-command. “But here on campus, a lot of conservatives learned you have to develop an intellectual background. You have to read and learn how to better understand Republicans and what they believe and say to give a better defense and compete on campus debates.”In order to hold their own, they study. (Underneath those Republican hats, after all, are NU students.) They read Barry Goldwater, Dinesh D’Souza, William F. Buckley, as well as books from the opposition. They make fun of An Inconvenient Truth and “global warming,” but after they’ve read it. They eat up conservative fodder like the Drudge Report. They even follow “elite liberal media” such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.During the two student groups’ debate watch parties, the dozen or so students who come show the same cerebral, analytical attitude. This is not a McCain-Palin mob in the parking lots of Strongsville, Ohio. The students sit in the reserved classrooms of University Hall in near silence. Occasionally, they will clap or nod or chortle, “zing!” or “hah!” at McCain’s triumphs and Obama’s gaffes, but mostly they just listen.And so they stake their position. “Being Republican on campus is actually fine,” says Jonathan Green, Weinberg sophomore and founder of Students for McCain. “It keeps you on your toes, and there’s always someone to debate. Hearing alternative viewpoints sharpens your own views, or at least brings them into question. It’s different from what I’m used to (back home in Florida), but it’s useful.” In short, at Northwestern, what doesn’t kill you makes you more Republican.It is impossible to know exactly how many Republicans there are on campus, but the College Republicans draws about 20 students during weekly meetings, up to 90 during big events, and emails a few hundred over its listserv.With Associated Student Government basing much of its funding on attendance, money is a quarterly worry for the organization. Funds are modest compared to the well-funded College Democrats, which counts 50 active members and 1,300 on its listserv. Last Winter Quarter, the Republicans didn’t receive funding at all because of low attendance at events. On Facebook, the official Northwestern Students for Barack Obama group netted nearly 750 members; Northwestern for McCain, 80.Walk off campus and the same trend holds. But that, says Acting University Archivist Kevin B. Leonard, is a complete turnaround from how Evanston and NU used to be. “Illinois is the Land of Lincoln, and so has been Republican for a long time,” Leonard says. “Evanston was founded by representatives of NU and early on attracted a Methodist population. So both the city and university were predisposed to Republican ideologies and supported the Republican Party.”For the first half of the 20th century, NU was known for being staunchly conservative. From 1908 to 1968, the university threw Mock Political Conventions in which the student body mimicked the national scene, playacting as the candidates and campaigning across campus for months, culminating in a campus-wide election before election season ended. In the event’s first 50 years, NU elected a steady stream of Republicans, save for one year, when the election was won by Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette, Sr., a progressive. It took 60 years before a Democrat – Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy – snagged a Convention, by a narrow margin.Black-and-white photographs of the 1960 Convention depict young women with tightly curled hair and men in buttoned cardigans waving large posters with Nixon’s grinning face printed on them in Welsh-Ryan Arena. According to local newspapers covering the event, NU students celebrated Nixon’s win by renting an elephant for the Convention’s closing parade.The last Mock Political Convention was in 1968. With the Vietnam War and civil rights movement broiling on the national scene, students left role playing for the real world, joining youth movements and participating in marches and rallies. NU began a steady but gradual trend towards liberalism in the ’60s, and the city shifted politically as well, as Evanston’s demographics changed. It is hard to tell when students political alignments really changed after the Conventions disappeared, but the tipping point was probably in the ’80s, Leonard says.By the 1990s, liberalism was the dominant view on campus. And so began a degree of conservative persecution. In 1998, the Chronicle and ASG underwent a brief battle in which the ASG threatened to de-recognize (and in effect shut down) the publication for violating regulations and distributing the paper in dorms, leading to student complaints about newspaper-strewn hallways. The Chron cried that ASG’s penalization was more about stifling right-leaning voices on campus than paper-clogged halls, and the paper, backed by a number of professors and alumnus Charlton Heston, survived. The entire debacle, wrote NU School of Law Professor Daniel Polsby in a letter to the editor in the July 14, 1998 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times, was “the product of a years-long vendetta conducted by student politicos who simply couldn’t abide the idea of a conservative voice on campus.”Still, NU is far from the bluest campus. Looking at campus now, Medill junior Catherine Mitros says she wouldn’t even call NU that liberal. “Any college campus is going to swing left, but I’ve heard things about other campuses, and it’s much more severe there,” says Mitros, who acts as the College Republicans’ vice president of publicity. “At NU, we’re all very respectful of each other and there is a good dialogue on campus. I’m in the minority, but I don’t feel I’m demonized for it.”When it comes to talking politics in class, protocol can be a little different for right-wing students. While they say they feel comfortable sharing their political views in a classroom setting, they may speak less, or more carefully. “In classes I’m less outspoken, definitely,” Mitros says. “But I’ll do anything for
an A. I’ll talk like a liberal for an A.”But the debates that ensue when they join the dialogue can be very entertaining. “People get mad, but I don’t let that get to me. It’s fun,” D’Angelo says, grinning. “It keeps me busy because you can’t just go along with everyone else. Lots of liberals never really have to back up their ideas, and once they’re in a debate or discussion, they’re hurting for the next move. It’s tough being the only guy in the group who’s throwing out conservative ideas, though. It took me a while to get here. Freshman year was tough, sophomore year too.”Given that this is an election year, however, D’Angelo says the College Republicans have seen a big spike in participation. While the organization refrains from endorsing candidates, most members support the GOP’s maverick duo, and many are in the campus’s Students for McCain group, where they phonebank, canvass, flyer and hold debate watch parties, and will continue to do so until election day.But as Obama’s lead in the presidential race continues, expanding to 10 points yesterday according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, Republican students are mulling the possibility of an Obama win. Weinberg sophomore Joe Sobecki says losing the White House to the Democrats would be disappointing, but looks at the situation with optimism. “If Obama won, I’d be happy there was a black president,” Sobecki says cheerfully. “I’d just wish it was a Republican.”