Your Campus Group Survival Guide
Morton C. Blackwell
January 28, 2019
Your Campus Group Survival Guide
Your Campus Group Survival Guide PDFSo, you want to lead a successful conservative or libertarian student group on your campus. Perhaps you already lead one. It will be your responsibility to lead your group to success, including long-term organizational survival. You must expand your leadership, grow your membership, and train good successors to build your legacy. This manual will teach you how.You'll learn about key topics, including how to:•Set up a systematic, ongoing program to recruit large numbers of new members•Conduct programs which educate other students•Deepen your own philosophical education•Establish working ties with conservative and libertarian leaders and organizations at the local, state, and national levels•Raise sufficient funds for your activities•Earn favorable publicity for your groups and projects•Identify and work with local conservative or libertarian faculty•Prepare worthy successors to replace yourself next year•Remain involved in your group as a mentor and ally after you graduateI expect you to succeed. You're already smart. You're already committed to your principles. Your training from the Leadership Institute, in this manual and at LI events, will teach you a lot. You will learn more through your experience in the months to come.What you do on campus will change people's lives, including your own.From my own career, I can promise you that, years from now, you will look back on this period of your life as one of your most interesting and valuable experiences.Students you recruit and develop as future leaders this year will build on the skills they learn from campus activities. Many will develop someday into highly effective leaders in government, politics, and the media.Much more good will be done than you will ever be able to measure. When you launch people in the right direction, they'll do good things you may never see or hear about.Morton C. BlackwellRead the entire Campus Group Survival Guide PDF hereLEADERSHIPLeadership QualitiesA great campus group leader is:• Philosophically solid• Technique-oriented• Courageous• Persistent• Prudent about making commitments• Scrupulous about keeping commitments• Skilled in verbal and written communication• Good with numbers and in handling moneyA group leader must also demonstrate sustained enthusiasm – and commitment – to the organization. You set the tone and the expectations for your club with your behavior.If you're an able leader, you'll keep your group focused on the organization's mission and ready to tackle new projects and new programs on your campus.A group leader's responsibilities include the ability to:• Recruit new members for the organization• Dedicate time to the group• Motivate and direct the rest of the group• Be level-headed and effective in a crisis• Identify and train new leadersBy no means does every effective member have the skills to become a group leader.Every successful group includes deeply committed people who can maximize their effectiveness by working with others. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a high calling.Leadership TrainingOne of the best predictors of sustained group success is well-trained leaders. You and your group members can learn about leadership through trial and error. But it's much quicker, practical, and fun to get top-notch training in effective techniques and apply them to gain valuable personal experience.Youth Leadership SchoolThe Leadership Institute's Youth Leadership School (YLS) – known as the “boot camp of politics” – will teach you how to increase the effectiveness of your group and be a competent youth leader for candidates and causes.In this two-day, comprehensive training, you'll learn how to:• Increase the size and effectiveness of your group• Motivate group members with exciting projects• Host successful speaker events• Gain media coverageYou and your group members will bring proven tools and techniques back to your campus – and you'll build motivation and camaraderie, too.Many campus groups send their membership. Some go further: the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) chapter at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette requires all group members to attend the YLS in their group constitution.The YLS is held across the country on weekends throughout the year.You can find the most up-to-date calendar on the Leadership Institute's website (leadershipinstitute.org/training) or by contacting the YLS staff (YLS@leadershipinstitute.org or 703-247-2000).“The Leadership Institute's Youth Leadership School has transformed the way my chapter of Young Americans for Liberty operates on campus. I believe that requiring all executive board members to take a Youth Leadership School directly contributed to our chapter becoming the 2018 YAL Chapter of the Year. The YLS brought us from a few friends to a community of over 100 dedicated pro-liberty activists.”— Kaleb Moore, Young Americans for Liberty, University of Louisiana-LafayetteStudent Activism ConferenceThe Leadership Institute's Student Activism Conference (SAC) brings together the best conservative and libertarian student activists in the country each year.You could be among them.Conference attendees receive advanced training in building a network of student leaders, and get hands-on experience in skills like conducting media interviews.At the SAC, you'll learn how to:• Expand group membership• Build coalitions on campus• Raise funds• Earn media attention• Deliver a message on camera• Host successful events and programs• Develop a leadership succession plan• Expose liberal bias and abuseContact your LI Regional Field Coordinator (visit leadershipinstitute.org/campus/map.cfm to find the coordinator serving your state) to learn about the next Student Activism Conference. If you're chosen to attend, your travel, hotel, and meals will all be covered thanks to generous Leadership Institute donors.Expand the LeadershipIt does you and your group no good to centralize all the power around you as the group leader.You must expand the leadership. Delegate responsibilities. Give group members a stake in the group's future (essentially: “give ‘em a title and get ‘em involved”).Encourage your members to develop their own skills as activists and leaders. The success and survival of your group depends on it.The Young Americans for Freedom Chapter at the University of Florida has developed a broad leadership structure: 15 leadership spots – and they're willing to create more as needed. New members quickly become involved and invested. Returning members keep their enthusiasm high as they can move up in the group's ranks.“With Leadership Institute training, I learned that it is important to ‘give ‘em a title and get ‘em involved.' I began creating position for my YAF chapter and getting as many people involved as possible. If we see a need, we don't hesitate to create a new position.”— Daniel Weldon, Young Americans for Freedom at the University of FloridaLeadership TransitionThe hallmark of your effectiveness as a leader is setting your group up for years of success.Too often, student leaders graduate and their group falls apart. The leaders may congratulate themselves for being the glue that held the group together. All they've demonstrated, however, is their own failure in leadership. They let down their group – and themselves.The final test of leadership comes in the year after you step down. Does your group continue to flourish, or does it dwindle or die off? You can control the outcome today.Commit to constantly identifying and developing promising new leaders. Then make and enact a plan to transition power to them.You might also consider beginning the tradition of electing a junior as your chapter president. The junior president should then promptly identify a talented sophomore to train as the next leader throughout the year.The former chapter president, a senior, can then serve as a senior advisor to the group. In this role, the former president assists in the decision-making process and offers advice to the new president as requested.The Students for Gun Rights group at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, has its senior president train and ensure they are ready to take the group over once he graduates. By using this system, this chapter has been sustainable for over six years and continues to grow and train new leaders on campus.Faculty AdvisorsIf you can find one who is sympathetic to your cause, a faculty advisor can be a valuable resource for your campus group.The majority of faculty are long-term university employees. They can help to maintain the longevity of your group as seniors graduate and freshmen arrive.The Hawaii Pacific University Laissez-Faire Society has a faculty advisor who helps to identify and support new group leaders. The group has been around since 2006 – more than 10 years – because of the advisor's work to keep the group active.An advisor can help you:• Properly host meetings and plan events• Navigate your school's bureaucracy to achieve your goals• Find faculty who will offer extra credit to their classes to attend your public programs•Become recognized as an official student organization, which will help you reserve campus space and receive fundingConservative or libertarian faculty members and staff are your best bet. Look carefully through the faculty of the Economics and Business departments in particular. You can also ask your LI Regional Field Coordinator for assistance.Sometimes you just can't find a conservative or libertarian professor in any liberal arts field who is willing to serve as your club's faculty advisor.Search elsewhere. Often engineering professors or others in the “hard sciences” share your political philosophy and make great faculty advisors.Try to find an advisor who wants to be involved in your group. It's best if your advisor is willing to attend meetings, support activism events and public programs, and help to hold your group (and you!) accountable.RECRUITMENTYou must set up a systematic, ongoing program to recruit large numbers of new members.Whether you're at a four-year or two-year school, you'll see a constant churn of students each year. Freshmen and transfer students arrive on campus, seniors graduate, and others spend time off-campus for study abroad programs or internships.The numbers can be staggering. At a school like the University of California-Los Angeles, which has about 31,000 undergraduate students enrolled, there is almost a completely new set of 31,000 students … every four years.As a bonus, an effective recruitment program will also keep your existing members active and involved with your group's growth.TablingTabling is the number-one way to find new members and keep your existing members involved in your group. Plan to do it at least once a week.Remember: you don't to have to lead an officially recognized campus group to begin tabling. Don't be afraid to table on behalf of a group you'd like to form – but haven't formed yet.Unfortunately, most students don't know how to table correctly. They sit behind the table, make limited eye contact and conversation with passersby, and finish their tabling shifts without finding any new members.To combat this, instruct your members to stand in front of the table and ask clever, provocative questions of students passing by. For example, you might ask, “Do you support freedom of speech? Or ‘Are you pro-life?”Opening with a personal question about political views is a stronger recruitment tactic than asking whether people have time to talk. (Hint: students you want to talk to will always say “no.”)It's recommended that you schedule shifts with at least one guy and one girl. Your group members should dress like normal college students. Don't ever wear business clothing while tabling; this will just deter other students.The goal of tabling is to invite potential members to get involved. Quickly steer your conversation to your group and its mission. Ask the person you're speaking with to join and attend a meeting.Once a student has agreed to sign up, ask for his or her phone number. Phone numbers are far more valuable than emails.Before your group's next event – even a regularly scheduled membership meeting – text the potential member and invite them to attend.“Tabling is the way to keep growing constantly and find the future leaders of the organization. If we are not growing, we are dying.”— Tahmineh Dehbozorgi, Young Americans for Liberty at the University of California-Los AngelesOrganization FairsStudent organization or involvement fairs are often held at the beginning of the academic year or semester. Check your school's calendar to find when yours are scheduled.These fairs are a valuable opportunity to identify potential group members. After all, students go to organization fairs with the goal of finding clubs and activities to join. That means they'll require far less convincing to sign up for your group or consider attending a meeting.If you cannot access a table, distribute clipboards to your group members and sign up students that way. If you're asked to leave by university officials, explain that you wanted to do the organization fair “right” (i.e. with a table) … but you also didn't want to miss the opportunity to find members for your club.“The student org fair is the most important recruitment opportunity because it's the beginning of the semester when students are feeling lonely, overwhelmed, and they need to connect with like-minded people.”— Brooke Paz, Students for Life of America at California State University, FullertonSocial MediaSocial media is not a replacement for tabling. But it can support your group's efforts to attract and communicate with new members.For example, you can use Facebook's search to find students who have “liked” conservative and libertarian politicians, celebrities, groups, and causes. Look for currently enrolled students who have mutual friends with you.Send a brief, relatable Facebook message (e.g. “I saw you liked Rand Paul and were friends with John Doe--do you still attend State Tech?”) and ask them to join your group. Your goal is to follow up with a phone call so you can establish a relationship – and stay in touch for future events. Quickly fold in new members to your existing group; add them to your Facebook group or group chat.Create social media accounts dedicated to your group, based on what platforms are most popular at your school and what you can reasonably manage. Foster a social media environment that is both work and play to help maintain members' involvement and communication.Make sure the transition of social media account information is part of your leadership transition each year. You don't want to discover a student studying abroad or a graduate now working out of state is the only person who can reset your Instagram password.You can also join social media groups for coalitions, whether specific to your campus or at a state or national level. If you're in a chapter for a national organization, it's highly likely the organization has groups for you to join.Follow-UpNo matter how you identify a potential group member – tabling, an organization fair, social media, or a personal conversation – you must follow up with each person.Call each potential member the day you meet and invite him or her to your next event. Be confident and professional, but don't be too formal. Encourage conversation and ask if there are any questions about the group that you can answer.If you wait even a few days, students who might otherwise join your group will commit themselves to other organizations – and will not have time for yours.Also be sure to call potential and inactive members shortly before your events.The Students for Life chapter at California State University Fullerton struggled to attract students to its meetings. An officer started calling through a list of students who had signed up for the club shortly before the meetings began. With 10 minutes of phone calls, three students showed up last minute.Imagine the outcome if the officer had started calling earlier.PROGRAMMINGPlanning Your ProgramsYour goal in planning may seem contradictory: plan … but be flexible.Thorough planning will help you and your group capitalize on every event, stay one step ahead of your opposition, and promote your ideas effectively. But flexibility will help you stay on course when a hot-button issue pops up, bad weather threatens an outdoor event, or a last-minute logistics change threatens to derail your event.A successful group leader must balance both.Planning• Check your school's schedule before you plan major events then coordinate with your group members. Avoid exams, big home games, or days off.• Set goals that you're confident you can achieve with the resources your group actually has, not the resources you wish to have. Unrealistic expectations will demoralize your group members.• Make sure you host one event, meeting, or social each week to keep your members engaged. Don't go overboard though. The more events you host, the greater the chance that members' excitement for them will diminish.• Make group meetings exciting. The Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Florida State University plans new content for each meeting so members have an incentive to come.• Whether it's a debate or presentation, always have a plan.Flexibility• Develop a back-up plan for all events you hold. What's your plan for inclement weather? Can a group member be on-call for A/V problems? Do you have pen and paper sign in sheets if the Wi-Fi fails?• Control as many factors as you can so you increase your ability to respond to unexpected events. For example:Reserve your meeting space for the entire semester earlyOwn your own table for recruitment events Know and remain up to date on school policies that affect your activities• Follow the news. Hot-button issues may pop up quickly. They're more likely to generate a reaction on campus – and help keep your group relevant.Embrace ControversyControversy – while you maintain your civility and commitment to your principles – can be a good thing. Don't avoid it.Do not be an agitator to elicit a response. Your ideas, presented civilly, will do that for you.Not all your group members will be comfortable with confrontation, so assign members to roles at events that play to their strengths. Members comfortable in the spotlight (but able to keep their cool!) can take a leading role. Other members can be given important tasks to support the event, even from behind the scenes.Don't let your members becomeYour goal is to draw attention to your group, to have your message heard by a large audience, and to elicit a reaction from leftist students, faculty, and administrators.No matter the event you host on campus as a libertarian or conservative student, you will face opposition from students, faculty, and administrators who are hostile toward your ideas. This is normal.It is important for your members to understand that they will encounter this opposition. They should not feel discouraged. There is a nationwide network of groups ready to support them.University faculty and administrators may either stand by and allow leftist students to violate your rights or to take an action themselves that violates your rights.Contact the leadership Institute's Campus Reform to highlight your case in the court of public opinion, and your Regional Field Coordinator to connect you with a legal group to defend your rights in the court of law.Know Your RightsAs a conservative student group you CAN do the following:• Get registered student organization (RSO) status• Table on campus• Reserve rooms• Get funding for eventsAlways be on the lookout for leftists that break laws when confronting your group. The laws will work in your favor if such incidents occur.Liberal students will often try to rile up your group, obstruct events, and destroy your recruitment/activism materials. Don't engage with them. Instead, assign students to video record the protestors' actions. Then contact your Leadership Institute Regional Field Coordinator for assistance.When students like you stand up for their rights on campus, they usually win. In addition, they have the opportunity to:• Frame the national narrative• Change campus policies• Create a “win psychology”• Give their group victories to build upon• Send a message to other campuses• Leave a legacy on campusActivismActivism events can be among your most important and valuable events of the year – if you plan and implement them correctly.With well-developed activism events, you can:• Defeat bad or unconstitutional anti-speech policies at your school• Expose bias and abuse• Change your campus culture• Inspire other like-minded students on your campus• Gain media attention and raise your group's profile• Increase group camaraderie, enthusiasm, and cohesion• Identify new group members and future leaders• Have a lot of funConsider tailoring your events to the calendar (i.e., do a Halloween-themed event around Halloween). A graveyard of civil liberties protest event, filled with gravestones and skeletons, would be a perfect fit for the holiday.The Rutgers Conservative Union at Rutgers University-New Brunswick staged a clever activism event in response to mandatory student funding of the school's liberal newspaper. The group taught students how to get their money back from the student newspaper. It shrank the liberal paper's budget – and helped students reclaim $2,800 in fees.Public ProgramsA consistent schedule of public programs will help you build your group membership and gain momentum on your campus.Hosting a public program will help you:• Attract new members and motivate existing ones• Earn credibility with faculty and professors• Build your name recognition on campus• Develop your members' leadership skills• Build a network in the movement• Meet interesting, high-profile peoplePlan to host at least two major public programs and as many simple programs as possible each semester. Create a budget and schedule these at least two weeks out. Popular, in-demand speakers may fill their calendars with speaking engagements weeks or months in advance.Be realistic and honest with yourself about how much time your group can devote to fundraising and advertising – and how many people are regularly active in your club. It's better to do a few events very well than many events poorly.MeetingsYou can invite local guest speakers to your regular meetings. The Young Americans for Liberty chapter at Liberty University hosted Nick Freitas, a Virginia state legislator, for a club meeting.Speaker ProgramsYou also should plan major public programs that are open to your campus or community.Harvard's Right to Life chapter drew 100 attendees when they hosted Lila Rose of Live Action. The Christians United for Israel chapter at the University of Florida had more than 600 people attend an event with Irving Roth, a Holocaust survivor. Before you host a major speaker event or public program, read Morton Blackwell's Guide to Presenting a Public Program (leadershipinstitute.org/img/writings/HowtoPresentaPublicProgram2015. pdf). This free guide will teach you, step-by-step, how to host an event on your campus.Your LI Regional Field Coordinator can also provide valuable resources, personal advice, and on-the-ground support.DebatesA proven way to build excitement among your group members – and across your campus – is to hold a debate with other groups on campus, specifically liberal groups.Keep an eye on national issues. If one is relevant to your group, seize the moment. Reach out to the leaders of other groups at your school and invite them to participate in the debate. The more groups involved, the more excitement and the greater the potential turnout.A debate is a relatively easy and inexpensive type of public program. You don't need to bring in a speaker from outside your campus, and the event is entirely managed by your group members.You can promote the message of your group to other students on your campus, and your members will enjoy the chance to beat the other group. Plus, you can identify future leaders and potential spokespeople – and provide your group members with valued and appreciated training in public speaking and debate.You should follow key guidelines to prep for the debate:• Develop and agree to an overall message that your team will present. It should be positive (i.e. what you're for, not just what you're against) and easy to remember.• Thoroughly research the topic so you have statistics, illustrative examples, and data to advance your point of view.• Plan for your opponents' arguments and agree on the responses. You don't have to accept your opponents' premise for the topic. Advance your own.ConferencesState or national conferences can be exciting, rewarding opportunities for you and your group. They can be a good recruitment incentive, and it gives your members something to look forward to throughout the year.Conferences offer you the opportunity to:• Sharpen campus leadership skills• Build friendships with other student leaders• Network with other national organizations• Learn best practices from others• Develop your philosophical understanding of important issuesTake advantage of conferences that interest you – especially since many offer full or partial scholarships for students.You might consider:• Leadership trips to LI's Student Activism Conference• Group trips to major conferences like CPAC, March for Life, Freedom Fest or your national organization's annual meeting• Regional conferences hosted by other groups like Young Americans for Liberty, Turning Point USA, or the Love and Fidelity Network Conferences — whether regional, ideological, or sponsored by your parent organization — are an excellent opportunity for your group.Social GatheringsSocial gatherings are a fun and informal way to help you strengthen relationships within your group. They can also be used to celebrate campus victories or the success of major events.You might consider debate-watching parties, pizza parties, moving screenings, or just getting together to watch your school's team play.Off-campus, you can host alumni reunions, organize community service events, or take part in getting togethers with like-minded groups at your campus or nearby schools. The Network of Enlightened Women chapter at Georgetown hosts a quarterly brunch and invites leaders from other D.C.-area schools to join.You can also get creative, depending on the interests of your group members. Libertarian student groups in the southeast organize an annual camping trip called the Rothbard Woodser. It typically draws 35 to 40 attendees.FUNDRAISINGA consistent source of independent funds will help your group accomplish its goals and remain active on campus. After all, you can't save the world if you can't pay the rent.Regular fundraising will help you to:• Make your group self-sufficient … and thus free of reliance on school funds, often controlled by leftist students or administrators• Bring in more well-known speakers• Host better socials and meetings• Send large groups to conferencesYou can learn how to raise funds for your group, even if you don't have any previous experience. The Leadership Institute will teach you. To start, read Morton Blackwell's Famous Foolproof Fundraising Formula (leadershipinstitute.org/Writings/?ID=28).Then contact your LI Regional Field Coordinator to learn about upcoming trainings.COALITIONSOne of the most effective ways to build your network, get your message out, and take back your campus is to form a coalition with like-minded groups at your school or at neighboring schools.The greater the number of causes represented by students in the coalition and the greater the number of well-led groups working comfortably together, the more effective your coalition will be. But that does not mean that all the students in each group will agree on the issues important to all other allied groups.Ideally, heads of the student groups in your coalition will be personally solid on the issues important to the other groups in the coalition. But to be successful, leaders must focus their separate groups' efforts on activities clearly within their respective missions.Seek out other conservative and libertarian groups on your campus to form coalitions. Identify the issues on which you have common ground. Then start organizing activism projects and public programs together that focus on these issues.At Colorado State University (CSU), a broad coalition formed, dubbed the Conservative Interest Group. The coalition included chapters of Students for Life, Turning Point USA, and Young Americans for Liberty. It also became a caucus for conservative and libertarian student senators involved in student government.From its first event – a giant free speech wall – the coalition was a success. The event drew involvement from more than 200 students on campus, and it became a major story on the Leadership Institute's Campus Reform.“What I would say is that we are in one of the biggest battles for conservative values on campus right now and forming coalitions is the only way we will overcome that battle. At CSU, not only was it was refreshing to have a coalition with like-minded people fighting for the same things, but it also felt like we were really making change on our campus. And we did it as a team which made it even sweeter.”— Emily Faulkner, former President of the CSU chapter of Students for Life, and Vice Chair of the Conservative Interest Group Coalition“Their activism efforts were more centralized. Single-issue students would become multi-issue students, because they would benefit in the long run from a larger pool of volunteers. Pro-gun students would help pro-life students because they knew pro-life students would return the support in the future. Instead of YAL and TPUSA having 3 different speech projects in one week, they could have a large one with a stronger media impact.”“CIG caucus was essential to building a group of student leaders and representatives in student government. Before the CIG Caucus, there were probably two conservatives in student government. By the time CIG was operating, we had 14 representatives from different conservative groups: tax reform, pro-life, small government, religion.”— Juan Caro, former CIG Caucus Chair, and former Conservative Interest Group Coalition Chair.Over time, your coalition will strengthen as ties – and a history of successes – among the groups increase. An effective coalition will help leadership transitions in all member groups, and it will help each group in the coalition remain more active.You can also find supportive organizations and resources off-campus. Many conservative and libertarian groups offer programs and services of interest to you, including training, resources, funding, physical assistance, consultation, and legal counsel.You will find many organizations willing to help you on the national, state, and local levels. Your Leadership Institute Regional Field Coordinator can assist you in composing a list of such groups and reaching out to them. Many likely work with LI on other projects already.Receive Free Resources for Your GroupJoin the Campus Leadership Program and Learn to WinYou have a moral obligation to study how to win.Being right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win. The winner in a political contest is determined over time the number and effectiveness of the activists on the respective sides. Successful organizations focus on their longevity with sound structure and leadership training.If you intend to lead a conservative group on campus, get in touch with a Leadership Institute Regional Field Coordinator today to begin setting your group up for long-term success.LI-affiliated groups are eligible for the following resources:• On-campus support• Exclusive training• Access to special events• Fundraising training• Activism grants• Professional media training and planning• Exposure to other conservative organizations• Career counseling and job opportunitiesLeadershipInstitute.org/Campus
Lecture to the August 2007 Field Representative Class
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
Lecture to the August 2007 Field Representative Class
Breaking Leftist Monopolies on America's Campuses (A speech to the fall 2007 Leadership Institute field representatives.) by Morton C. Blackwell August 17, 2007 I'm Morton Blackwell, president of The Leadership Institute. I deeply regret that I cannot be here in person with you, but our Leadership Institute Studios enable me to record these remarks for you. Congratulations, you are by far the largest group of field staff the Leadership Institute has ever recruited. In 2006 my staff and I engendered inquiries from 300 potential field staff. We hired and trained 20% of them, 60 people. Experience is the best teacher. This year, spending on recruitment less than a third of what we spent last year, we received more than 1,100 inquiries and offered fewer than 10% of the applicants positions as field representatives this fall. So you can see that this year we have been able to be more selective. I am quite confident that, on average, you are the best-qualified set of field reps LI has ever hired. Your primary task this fall will be to identify, recruit, and organize conservative students on campuses which do not now have active conservative groups. And we expect you to enable the new groups you organize to grow stronger after you leave them. Prepare them to continue in operation for a long time. Your training will be the best we have ever given LI field reps, and the useful materials you will give to students will be the best the Institute has ever produced. Secondarily, but still very important, you will be expected to do all you can to strengthen existing clubs and to help already-organized students to create multiple conservative groups on their own campuses. From its outset in 1997, our Campus Leadership Program has shown net growth. Some groups inevitably become inactive, but our organizing activities consistently create more new groups than the number of existing groups which fall by the wayside. You are now important parts of a project which will have significant impact on our country. You will change many lives, and some of your recruits may become your lifelong friends. From years of observation and personal experience, I know that many students you recruit will build on the leadership skills they learn from campus activities and join the next generation of conservative leaders. The Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program already has a powerful effect on many college campuses. In June of 2006, our number of active, conservative, independent campus groups reached 738. I promised our Leadership Institute donors that we would have at least 1,000 active campus groups by the end of 2006. We achieved that goal. I'm counting on you to achieve another major increase in the number of active groups this fall. In January of this year, we published a directory of 1,004 active groups on 411 American college campuses. This fall we are targeting primarily campuses which now have no existing, independent student groups, I expect you to double the number of American college campuses with organized, conservative groups. That will mean well over 1,000 active groups on well over 800 campuses. Your efforts are an essential element of conservatives' long-term struggle against the campus left across America. In many cases, CLP groups are the only manifestations of any conservative presence on their campuses. The left does not take kindly to any expression of conservative principles on their campus strongholds. Over the years, the left has wiped out and excluded from many colleges and universities anything supportive of limited government, free enterprise, strong national defense, or traditional values. Nevertheless, our Campus Leadership Program is over the moat and cracking their walls. You should not expect a cordial welcome from the "powers that be" when you visit such schools, particularly when they learn that you intend to break their monopolies. Two years ago I began a list of the problems faced by conservative students on so many college campuses. What's wrong on campus is so massive and complex that the problem almost staggers the mind. I entitled this list "How Low Can Higher Education Go?" At this point, I ask my staff to give each of you copies of that list. (Pause for two minutes for copies to be distributed. Note to staff from MCB: At this point, please distribute copies of the new, organized list of How Low...) You shall have with you copies of this list, printed on genuine, simulated parchment paper, for sharing with the conservative students you recruit. Not every school experiences all these abuses, but any conservative college student you know who is now enrolled at any but the tiny handful of explicitly conservative colleges could curl your hair with stories of these abuses on his or her own campus. And the professors, the college officials, and the national leftist groups which pour resources into student organizations know very well what they're doing: undermining the political, cultural, and moral foundations of America under the cover of "academic freedom." Of course, in some cases, college administrators are not intentionally promoting such abuses. They have so many other things to do. And fighting such abuses or questioning leftist dogma would create problems for them with leftist faculty. Even the liberal head of Harvard University recently found this to be true. He merely questioned a leftist belief, and he lost his job. The people we are fighting truly hate Western civilization and are determined to destroy it. They hate virtually everything you and I love about America, and they will never forgive the United States for winning the Cold War. It has often and probably correctly been said that there are today more convinced Marxists on American college faculties than there are in the former Soviet empire. You may find the following background interesting. After years of thinking and planning, I began the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program in 1997 as a pilot program with only one staffer responsible for organizing and working with conservative student groups at campuses in the D.C. area. With the generous help of Leadership Institute donors, I then gradually expanded the program to cover the nation. In 2006 we more than doubled our investment in this program. Because more funding is available, I shall invest even more in campus organizing in 2007. For a few years, LI had resident field staff in five regions of the country. They had the dual task of starting new CLP groups and personally working on site to advise existing CLP groups in their regions. Costs of the program kept increasing, but the number of active CLP groups did not change much. Acting on good advice, I made the decision in 2003 that most of our resources for campus activity would go toward hiring full-time field staff who would work for ten- or eleven-week periods principally to form new groups. At the same time, I added to the number of CLP staff officed in our building -- to increase the number and quality of services offered local groups by our headquarters staff. This summer we have greatly increased the number of staff resident here who will assist you and all our active campus groups. In an ideal world, we might have the resources to help every conservative campus group with frequent staff visits to their campus, or even install resident advisers on many campuses. Donations are increasing, but we don't have vast resources. And closely supervising all the CLP groups' activities would amount to running a large, nationwide, membership organization. I aim to build a movement, not an empire. While we're getting better at keeping existing groups from fading away, there is always some attrition. For whatever reason, some groups don't expand their leadership, don't grow their membership, don't train good successors, and don't survive for long. Nevertheless, LI's Campus Leadership Program, through your efforts this semester, will have a lot more active groups at the end of December than the thousand we had at the start of this year. What you personally do this semester will change many lives. And some of your recruits may become your lifelong friends. Many will develop into highly effective leaders in government, politics, and the media. In future public policy battles, that will shift, in favor of conservative principles, the balance of effective activists between conservatives and the left. I had thought about helping conservative students create their own campus groups for many years. Let me share with you my thinking as I designed LI's Campus Leadership Program. While College Republican clubs tend to be conservative, not all of them are. And partisan political clubs often focus on election-campaign activities to the exclusion of explicitly promoting their political principles. It happens that none of the other non-partisan conservative organizations which work largely with college students had then, or has now, any program to organize significant numbers of student groups on campus. Intercollegiate Studies Institute used to have a significant field program to organize ISI campus groups, but they virtually ended their field work many years ago and only recently have begun doing some field work again. In the main, they create and distribute high-quality, intellectual materials which promote conservative principles. They do a superb job of assisting many conservative campus publications but now devote very little attention to creating new ones. The vast majority of local campus publications ISI now generously supports were started by Leadership Institute graduates. Young America's Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, had no program to organize student groups, in large part because they were an offshoot of the once-very-widespread Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a 501(c)(4) organization. YAF was composed for a long time of hundreds of local groups. YAF virtually collapsed due to internal problems. For whatever reason, their offshoot, Young America's Foundation, chose not to take up the task of organizing conservative groups on college campuses. Their major on-campus program now provides many excellent conservative speakers to college audiences. Often our CLP groups serve as the local sponsors of speakers generously provided by Young America's Foundation. Other conservative groups (too few) do good work educating students in conservative principles, but none of them creates large numbers of local campus groups. By the way, I have never thought that the Leadership Institute had any conservative rivals. We do have a lot of allies. The field was wide open for some conservative educational organization to take up the important task of organizing local student groups. I saw the need, and I wanted to do this for years. To build a strong, national program, I needed to think out how to do it and how to raise sufficient funds to pay for a field staff to visit campuses to organize new student groups. Then the Institute could learn through experience how to organize such groups cost-effectively. Let me explain to you why I designed this program to create independent student groups, rather than a national membership group with affiliated chapters. Each independent group gives a different set of young conservatives personal experience in leadership of conservative activities. That's one major reason why I decided to create independent conservative student groups and not a national membership organization. National student membership organizations necessarily have conventions and elections, which mean internal power struggles and, inevitably, purges of many who lose those power struggles. That is not entirely a bad process, because experiences in such a system teach important lessons. But those lessons can be learned in, say, College Republicans and elsewhere. And a national membership organization would require immense resources to supervise local campus groups ultimately subordinate to the national organization. Without such supervision, any local group might do things (to which young people are prone) which would embarrass the national organization as well as all the other local groups which behaved entirely responsibly. There is a good reason why the words "young" and "foolish" are used often together in the same sentence. The matter of legal liability also concerned me. I would not want the Leadership Institute held financially liable for the debts or actions of any local groups. So under my plan the Leadership Institute began to identify and recruit conservative students to form their own, independent organizations. Once formed, these groups would make all their own decisions. LI has no control over them or any supervisory authority. We do, of course, want to assist these local campus groups in many ways through a correspondent relationship: phone, fax, email, occasional visits, booklets and other materials which can help them succeed, and, of course, Leadership Institute training. As they actively promote conservative principles and fight against leftist abuses on campus, I want student leaders to look to the Institute as a source of good advice and effective assistance. From the outset, I realized that these new student groups would enlarge the pool of potential recruits for LI's now-39 different types of educational programs -- a big and long-lasting advantage which the Institute's donors would happily support. I knew that success in organizing groups on a significant number of campuses would please and excite LI donors, and many donors would increase their donations. You can't save the world if you can't pay the rent. Most LI donors get considerable satisfaction when liberal campuses near them have groups of organized and trained students fighting for their conservative principles. Sometimes our donors get to know the nearby conservative students and help them in various ways. I knew LI donors would be enthusiastic. I knew they would generously increase their support if and when I could show considerable progress in organizing conservative student groups on college campuses. The Institute continues to make a strong effort to get our graduates, our donors, and many other conservatives to give us the contact information of students they know who might be interested in our help to organize new, conservative campus groups. Field reps this semester will leave here with some pre-identified contacts who should make your job much easier as you visit campuses in your assigned areas. Most important, of course, is the value of having local student leaders promote conservative principles to fellow students on as many campuses as possible. Just knowing they are not alone on campus, that other people around them on campus openly espouse conservative principles, encourages conservative students to resist the indoctrination, propaganda, and actual oppression which the left so often systematically imposes on American college campuses. I intended the Campus Leadership Program as a "rescue mission" for conservative students subjected to leftist indoctrination and persecution. It's working. Absent that moral reinforcement, more students would be sucked into the flow and come to believe that what their families and the healthy aspects of American culture taught them is old-fashioned and perhaps evil -- that it is doomed and not worth fighting for. Surely the leftists who dominate most of our campuses savor the advantages they have over conservative students and delight in their power to indoctrinate students in socialist ideas. The last thing the leftists want is for conservatives to promote conservative principles effectively on college campuses. So you can see why, from the outset, my plan was to organize groups on as many campuses as possible. I knew that some campus groups we organized would not last long and that my staff and I would have to work hard with newly organized groups to get them to do those things which would result in success on campus, including long-term organizational survival. A dozen things such as: 1. Setting up a systematic, ongoing program to recruit large numbers of new members 2. Conducting programs which educate other students in conservative principles 3. Deepening their own education in conservative principles 4. Systematically studying how to win 5. Establishing working ties with conservative leaders and organizations at the local, state, and national levels 6. Creating realistic annual budgets for their groups 7. Starting their group's bank account 8. Raising sufficient funds for their own activities 9. Getting favorable publicity for themselves and their projects 10. Identifying and working with any local conservative faculty 11. Placing a high priority on preparing worthy successors to replace themselves after they graduate 12. Deciding they will remain involved in their groups as mentors and allies after they become alumni. Staff at our Arlington office can persuade local leaders to do these things pretty well, and do it much less expensively than resident mentors on each campus. You can help CLP groups last a long time by persuading students you meet to achieve these desirable things. You should know that the Leadership Institute provides other national conservative educational organizations with the contact information of all our CLP groups. I frequently urge other conservative educational groups to offer their materials and services to the members of our CLP groups. Many national conservative groups offer programs valuable to conservative students. These groups deepen students' understanding of conservative principles and of specific public policy issues. They assist the local activities of many campus groups our field staff organizes. The most cost-effective things LI's Campus Leadership Program can do this semester are to organize new campus groups and strengthen the existing ones. That produces a wide range of benefits. The next step, an opportunity made much greater by the existence of so many new groups: to help those conservative students in CLP groups develop skills, through training and their personal experiences. Then thousands of them will become more effective conservative leaders and activists and stay active politically all their lives. Organizing conservative student groups at essentially every campus in America must be the primary focus of LI's Campus Leadership Program. All those new groups constitute a growing pool of recruits for LI's training programs, accessible to us at minimal cost of recruitment. This makes efficient use of donors' contributions for the Institute's many training programs. Even if I had sufficient resources, I doubt I'd station resident field staff semi-permanently on individual campuses. In specific regions, to travel around and advise many different groups, maybe. Someone stationed on an individual campus would amount to a boss, a hands-on supervisor. That top-down authority would curtail the independence of the local student leaders and make them essentially subordinates. Bottom up is the best way to develop new leaders. Training potential leaders is highly useful, but leadership is like riding a bicycle: After instruction, you have to get up and actually do it yourself. For local students whom we want to develop into effective leaders, having a resident supervisor on campus would be like always riding a bike with training wheels. Truly independent local campus leaders gain valuable self-confidence and develop the ability to take the initiative themselves. To build a new generation of conservative leaders and activists who want to win, we must identify, recruit, organize, and train young conservatives. Then we must provide them with opportunities to manage controversial activities and thereby gain experience in independent leadership in the public policy process. Make no mistake about it: Some of the people you recruit, activate, and train will be fighting for conservative principles for the rest of your life. Some will outlast you and do good things for our country which you will never see, things which will make America better for your children and your grandchildren. You'll be able to see much of the good which will come from your activities this semester. But much more good will be done than you will ever be able to measure because when you launch people in the right direction they will do good things you may never see or hear about. In 2003, I had a chance meeting with then-Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado. He had just been described in National Review as "America's Greatest Governor." Gov. Owens gave me a hug -- not a little hug but a bear hug. I was completely nonplussed and gave him a modest hug in return. He smiled and told me, "There is no reason for you to remember this, Morton. But back when I was a high school student in Texas, you organized a Teen Age Republican camp in Lafayette, Louisiana. I was one of the few out-of-state students to attend. "For a week you trained me in political issues and political action, and that changed my life." "Governor," I replied with a smile, "that TAR camp in Lafayette was in 1970, 33 years ago." If I hadn't met Governor Owens by chance, I would probably never have learned that I had a formative role in his political activity. In the past three years, our Campus Leadership Program has had considerable success. We know a number of methods by which new groups have been formed. You may be able to discover additional ways, but here are the methods we have found to date: 1. Field Staff: Organization of new groups by our field staff who visit campuses, recruit students, and organize them into new groups -- by far the most successful technique thus far for us. 2. Publications Creating Sister Activist Groups: A number of existing conservative campus publications have organized new and separate activist groups on their own campuses. 3. Existing Groups Creating Separately Organized Publications: The reverse of the second method. Some existing campus conservative groups have decided later to create free-standing conservative campus newspapers or magazines. 4. Calving: This is the organization of additional, more specialized groups on their own campuses by members of existing CLP groups which promote a wider range of policy interests. Last January, we made a study of the 1,004 CLP groups. We had twelve groups at the University of Arizona, eleven groups each at three other campuses, Michigan State University, The College of William and Mary, and Marquette University. And twice in recent years, Leadership Institute graduates active in multiple CLP groups at the famously liberal University of Wisconsin at Madison took control of the student government there. Although not all such multiple groups survive, there's good reason to have more than one conservative group on an individual college campus. For a generation, the left has organized a galaxy of student organizations, multiple groups on each major campus. Why not match this with many different conservative groups on a given campus? 5. Colonizing: Some conservative student groups have successfully set out to organize additional groups (general groups, specialized-issue groups, or publications) on campuses other than their own. That's a fine project for a local campus group. 6. Student Ambassadors: The Institute has had some success motivating individual students to serve as "Student Ambassadors" who take on the personal task of setting up recruitment tables on campuses other than their own. Local students sometimes create new CLP groups on nearby campuses, much as each of you will do full time for the next ten or eleven weeks. We offer a variety of incentives for local students who succeed personally in forming new groups on new campuses. 7. Over the Transom: Sometimes, albeit rarely in the past, conservative students or someone who knows them contact LI for assistance in forming new organizations on their own campuses. That is changing this year as we have spread better through conservative channels the news of the Institute's availability to help any conservative student who asks for organizing assistance. New clubs in this category use materials provided by CLP staff from our offices and sometimes do not require a visit by our field representatives. That way LI saves the time, talent, and money it takes to send someone like you to these campuses. As the network of CLP groups grows, we will reach "critical mass," where what we are doing becomes so widely known that more and more interested students will contact our offices for help in organizing on their campuses. 8. This year the Leadership Institute has had success in getting some other national conservative issue-oriented groups to help LI form new CLP groups. Soon more such groups should decide to partner with LI in forming issue-related groups on many campuses. With materials LI would provide, such groups would undertake to help form student groups focused on their issues. These are the eight methods by which we have organized all the existing Campus Leadership Program groups. My staff and I would be delighted if any of you could think of methods other than the eight I have listed which we could use to create additional conservative campus groups. In any case, we are a long way from having so many campus groups that the effort to form the next hundred new groups will be significantly harder or more costly per group than the effort we expended to form the hundred most recent groups. From long experience in organizing new groups on unorganized campuses, I know that the vast majority of campuses are equally easy to organize. Adding new CLP clubs won't become significantly harder until we come close to organizing multiple groups on all the campuses it is possible to organize. There are rare campuses which pose serious impediments for organizing, such as cases where the school administration adamantly refuses permission to set up a recruitment table, or rare cases where leftists credibly threaten known conservatives with serious physical violence. For example, it took me literally 20 years of almost annual attempts (1960-1980) to form a College Republican club at predominantly black Southern University in my old hometown of Baton Rouge. Recently, the left has become aware of the growing presence of conservative activity on American college campuses. Students you recruit may have heard or read news media reports from meetings organized by billionaire George Soros. Soros and some rich allies are now funding groups intended to counter the efforts on college campuses of the Leadership Institute and other conservative educational organizations. Although Soros and his allies hope through their spending to increase the effectiveness of the left on campus, I tell you: "Not to worry." I do not fear that activities they bankroll will significantly increase the left's campus influence. Nor can Soros stop the growth of campus conservative activities. George Soros and his wealthy friends cannot write checks big enough to increase significantly the resources the left already spends on American college campuses. Not all college professors and administrators are leftists, but the great majority of the politically active ones are, as Dan Flynn's booklet "Deep Blue Campuses" proved. You can find that report at www.leadershipinstitute.org. Add up all the money which pays the salaries of leftist professors and administrators. Add the money spent on the leftist, official student newspapers. Add the college funds and the compulsory student fee money spent to bring off-campus leftists to speak during the school year and at graduation ceremonies. Then add in all the compulsory student activity fees money poured into leftist student organizations. And the money national left-wing organizations pour into support of the vast array of campus leftist groups. American college and university budgets total about $150 billion every year. The amount of money they devote to pushing leftist indoctrination must be many billions every year. George Soros, billionaire though he is, can't write checks of that magnitude. Neither can his wealthy allies. They can spend a lot, especially when compared to what LI and other conservative foundations spend on campus. But their spending won't have much more effect than pouring a bucket of water into Lake Michigan. If you study how Soros affected the political situation in other countries, you will see that in every case he supported political insurgents against repressive regimes. In all those cases, he found it easy to identify and fund dissidents morally indignant against the abuses of those in power. American college campuses certainly are now a fertile field for the kinds of activities which proved successful for Soros in the past. But now he's on the wrong side, and conservatives are on the right side. On U.S. campuses, those with the power are almost everywhere abusive leftists. Those who chafe under the bias and persecution on campus have a big moral edge, particularly when trained and organized conservative students shine spotlights on the leftist abuses. Students appreciate cleverness, but they react negatively to unfairness when it is skillfully called to their attention. Conservatives have moral indignation on our side regarding the leftist abuses on campus. Moral indignation is highly contagious and so powerful that it tends to sweep aside everything else. That is why, in almost every case, a three-pronged strategy of public relations, political heat, and legal responses wins against leftist abuses on campus. George Soros achieved spectacular results when he funded highly motivated political insurgents against all the massive resources of repressive, socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. American campuses today are dominated by repressive, socialist regimes. Leftists believe that any conservative presence on campus is too much, even though the resources of time, talent, and money available for campus conservative activity are still minuscule compared to those of the left. Yet conservatives are making great progress. Once again it's David versus Goliath. Soros funded David against the Soviet empire. That worked. Now he's funding Goliath on campus. That won't work. Conservatives have achieved a lot on campus but have barely begun to fight. We shall achieve a lot more as our resources continue to grow. Any group you create will only be as strong as its programs. Without programs, any group will fade away. For free, LI can provide, on DVDs, at least three such programs: our video, "Independence or World Government"; our documentary, "Roots of the Ultra-Left"; and LI's well-produced video recording of a superb speech at LI by Professor Alan Kors, "The Betrayal of Liberty and Intellectual Pluralism on American Campuses." Starting this September, for the first time, a Leadership Institute donor has provided funds which we can grant to local groups who want to present public speakers on their campuses. You will have applications which local clubs can use to ask for grants of up to $3,000 for this purpose. Active clubs should have membership meetings at least monthly, say, on the first Tuesday of every month. Better yet, clubs could meet on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. In addition to some public programs presented each semester, a local club should have a program of some sort at each of its meetings. Easiest of all, the club can invite a variety of interesting, local speakers. You will have copies to distribute of the new edition of my manual, "How to Present a Public Program." Students who use the techniques suggested there should be able to present successful programs. In your travels, you will probably encounter opportunities to help conservative students organize spontaneous activities or demonstrations. For example, last year in Chicago, an illegal alien woman from Mexico, with her American-born son, holed up in a United Methodist church. The liberal officials at the local church granted her so-called "sanctuary," a medieval concept which is not legally recognized in the United States. Although she is under a deportation order, Federal authorities have made the very questionable decision not to enter the church to arrest and deport her. She has received national publicity, of course. And the area around the church gets news media attention. One of you might encourage local conservative students to organize a protest demonstration. The student groups involved could fax or email a news release to all the Chicago news media six hours before your demonstration. Your news release could contain responsible quotes from local students. You could put in the news release the wording of signs the conservative student demonstrators would display. For example, you could position students along the street near the church to show the passing traffic a series of Burma-Shave signs, with a poem reading: Sign 1 Get the church to fund you. Sign 2 Take your boy and go. Sign 3 You'd be rich and legal Sign 4 Down in Mexico. You could also prepare some effective stand-alone signs reading: What part of illegal do you not understand? and Secure Our Borders! Ladies and gentlemen, you're going out with a proven, successful plan. The Leadership Institute and conservatives all across America stand ready to help you succeed. You will find our Institute staff here smart, experienced, and ready to help you. I expect you all to succeed. You're already smart. You're already committed to conservative principles. Your training here will teach you a lot. You will learn more through your experience in the coming months. In your travels, you will learn useful things which you weren't taught here. Please immediately share such information with your supervisors and with me, so we can share it with your fellow field staff. And we'll incorporate that knowledge in our future field-staff training. Finally, I ask you to carefully and completely report, verbally and in writing, all harassment, abuses, or persecution you and the conservative students you recruit encounter from the campus left, whether from professors, administrators, campus police, or leftist students. War stories are useful in many ways. Some get publicized and hurt the left a lot. Some teach useful lessons for conservative students across the country. Some inspire donors to contribute substantial gifts. Years from now you will look back on this period of your life as one of your most interesting and valuable experiences. Good luck. And God bless you.
Deep Blue Campuses
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
Deep Blue Campuses
John Kerry v. George W. Bush: Giving to 2004 Presidential Campaigns from Employees at U.S. News & World Report's Top-Ranked National UniversitiesUSN&WR's 2004School RankingsKerry/BushDollar RatioKerry/BushDollar %Number ofDonations Harvard31 to 198% to 2%406 to 13Princeton114 to 199% to 1%114 to 1Yale50 to 198% to 2%150 to 3Penn19 to 195% to 5%93 to 5Duke14 to 193% to 7%98 to 7 MIT61 to 198% to 2%121 to 2Stanford9 to 190% to 10%257 to 28CIT11 to 192% to 8%22 to 2Columbia14 to 193% to 7%197 to 14DartmouthInfinity100% to 0%39 to 0 Northwestern17 to 194% to 6%100 to 6Washington U.4 to 180% to 20%56 to 14Brown11 to 192% to 8%43 to 4Cornell20 to 195% to 5%142 to 7Johns Hopkins7 to 187% to 13%125 to 19 Chicago5 to 184% to 16%77 to 15Rice4 to 178% to 22%21 to 6Notre Dame2 to 169% to 31%18 to 8Vanderbilt3 to 175% to 25%76 to 26Emory16 to 194% to 6%80 to 5 Univ. of California25 to 196% to 4%694 to 28Carnegie Mellon18 to 195% to 5%55 to 3Michigan23 to 196% to 4%159 to 7UVA7 to 188% to 12%72 to 10Georgetown22 to 196% to 4%132 to 6 American colleges and universities are very different from the nation that surrounds them.The differences are especially profound when it comes to politics. The United States is closely divided between the two major parties, but no such division exists on any major college campus. Federal Election Commission records from 2004 show a wide disparity in donations to the two major presidential candidates from college and university employees.Employees at Harvard University gave John Kerry $31 for every $1 they gave George W. Bush. At Duke University, the ratio stood at $14 to $1. At Princeton University, a $114 to $1 ratio prevails.The Kerry/Bush split in the number of donations is even more extreme. John Kerry received 257 donations of $200 or more from Stanford, while his opponent got just 28. At Northwestern, Kerry received 100 such contributions and Bush six. Georgetown University donations swung 132 to six in Kerry's favor.Deep Blue Campuses examines the political donations of employees at the top twenty-five national universities listed in U.S. News and World Report's 2004 college issue. Specifically, this booklet compares donations in the 2004 election cycle to the two major presidential candidates, George W. Bush and John Kerry.Although George Bush claimed a bare majority of votes in the actual election, John Kerry trounced him in donations received from colleges and universities. In fact, John Kerry received the lion's share of donations from workers at all twenty-five schools featured in U.S. News and World Report's annual survey. At one school (Dartmouth), Kerry posted an infinite advantage: FEC records show 39 donations to Kerry but not a single Dartmouth employee donating to George W. Bush's campaign.According to Federal Election Commission records, five of the top twenty institutions of all types from which donors made contributions to John Kerry's campaign – the University of California, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia – were universities.[1] The UC system and Harvard actually gave more than Viacom, JP Morgan, CitiGroup, and other corporate behemoths. In contrast, no university ranked in George W. Bush's top twenty contributors.The buzzword on campus is diversity. The reality on campus is conformity.Ward Churchill: Case Study In the spring of 2005, Ward Churchill, a heretofore obscure professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, became the subject of op-eds, cable news debates, blog posts, and angry talk-radio calls. Several schools, including Hamilton College, ignited controversy by inviting Churchill to speak. Churchill had penned a response to 9/11 entitled “Some People Push Back,” which characterized Osama bin Laden's followers as acting with “patience and restraint” and compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis.[2]America considers Ward Churchill a mental case. Academia considers Ward Churchill a scholar.Churchill holds a masters degree in communications from Sangamon State University yet somehow managed to get tenure at one of the nation's more prestigious state universities. A committee of his peers even made him the chairman of an academic department. Outside the University of Colorado, universities officially invite him to address their students. Standing ovations interrupted Churchill's post-controversy speeches at the Universities of Hawaii and Colorado, for instance, and overflow audiences packed the rooms.[3] The Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College even inducted Churchill into its group.The Churchill scandal illustrates the perils of campus conformity. The University of Colorado hires extremists such as Ward Churchill, but excludes mainstream conservatives. When the Rocky Mountain News surveyed thirteen departments on the Boulder campus in 1997, they found a 31-1 Democrat/Republican party-registration imbalance among the faculty.[4]If a conservative relied on as underwhelming a resume as Ward Churchill and similarly exposed himself as a sloppy thinker in the way Churchill has, would he have received tenure, a department chair, and the support of the University of Colorado faculty? No.Churchill's radicalism, rather than his resume, landed him the job. Just as his politics were his qualifications, the politics of conservatives often disqualify them from academic positions.Consequences of GroupthinkAmerican college campuses are tiny blue islands engulfed in a giant red sea. The political alienation of the professoriate results in a tendency among academics to lash out at the surrounding society, to react immaturely to views contrary to their own, and to cultivate extremism among students. A more politically diverse faculty would alleviate these problems.The controversy over Ward Churchill's words coincided with a controversy over the words of a more famous academic.[5] Harvard President Larry Summers's speech exploring possible genetic differences in the cognitive abilities of the sexes sparked controversy on campus, whereas Churchill's words sparked controversy off campus.In response to the uproar over Churchill, hundreds of CU faculty purchased an ad in a Boulder newspaper expressing their support for their embattled colleague.[6] In Summers's case, the Harvard faculty of arts and sciences voted to call on Summers to resign.[7]Campus conformity makes freedom of speech a relative concept, subject to the political outlook of the speaker. If your words offend liberals, like Summers's words did, it is deemed a firing offense. If your words offend everybody else, like Churchill's words did, academics will defend you and label criticism “censorship.” On campus, what unfortunately matters is whose ox is being gored. This overwhelming political bias characterizes the faculties of all top colleges.The campus is the place where speech should be the most free. The campus is the place where speech is the most restricted.Offended by a politically incorrect campus newspaper, students in a women's studies class at Rutgers fulfilled a required assignment to “construct a feminist action project” by collecting signatures demanding the university ban the publication. When the censorship campaign went nowhere, students took action into their own hands by confiscating and destroying an entire press-run of the paper in the fall of 2004.[8]Ball State University student Amanda Carpenter penned exposés on BSU faculty and its summer reading program in her campus publication, www.bsyou.net. In response, a BSU teaching assistant doctored images of her – superimposing her face over pornographic pictures – and posted them on a local message board.[9]Left-wing activists assaulted Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol, and Pat Buchanan as they spoke on campuses during the 2004-2005 school year.Over 2004's Thanksgiving weekend, Yale University thieves confiscated an entire press run of the Yale Free Press, a conservative student publication. The school's Dean of Student Affairs refused to look into the matter, brushing off the student journalists. To have their complaint investigated, they had to individually contact each of the school's eleven residential colleges, the Dean told them.[10]Why does a healthy exchange of ideas matter in an academic setting? The search for truth is the longstanding mission of higher education. When one side of the debate is silenced, finding the truth becomes more difficult. If institutions embraced intellectual diversity in the way they have embraced racial diversity they would be much more likely to foster debate and thus aid the search for truth.Consequences of Groupthink, Part IIWard Churchill merely defends terrorists. Other professors once were terrorists.Bill Ayers bombed the Pentagon in 1972. Now he's the Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago.Bernadine Dohrn, a terrorist who romanticized the Manson Family, reacted to the 1969 Helter Skelter slayings by remarking: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!”[11] Dohrn is now a professor at Northwestern University and gave the 2004 commencement address at Pitzer College.Like Ayers and Dohrn, Mark Rudd helped lead the Weather Underground, which bombed banks, police stations, and university buildings in the 1970s. Today he teaches at a college in New Mexico.However, what is taught is more important than who is teaching.While their lecture halls host scores of politicized courses such as “Women, Race, Gender, Sexuality” (Yale) and “Feminist Biblical Interpretation” (Harvard), Yale and Harvard prohibit the Reserve Officers Training Corps from using their classroom space.A sample of ideologically-loaded courses elsewhere include the University of Michigan's “How to Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation,” Amherst College's “Taking Marx Seriously,” and the University of North Carolina's “Environmental Advocacy.” Grading on an ideological curve, assigning activism for credit, and transforming lecterns into soap-boxes are among the pitfalls of a hyper-politicized faculty.Campus BiasFor years, the left dismissed such anecdotes as cherry-picked examples that distort the reality of the campuses as repositories of debate, intellectual diversity, and free speech. In response, conservatives began to undertake empirical surveys demonstrating the political imbalance on college campuses.Numerous studies have demonstrated just how politically slanted the campuses are. The findings of Deep Blue Campuses are consistent with the existing body of data that shows that those entrusted with imparting knowledge to the rising generation are outside of the mainstream.
Morton Blackwell’s Famous Foolproof Fundraising Formula
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
Morton Blackwell’s Famous Foolproof Fundraising Formula
Download the PDF version here.IntroductionOf the many ways students raise funds for campus public policy activities and organizations, only the following method, personal solicitation, has proved to be universally successful. That's why it's known as foolproof. And why it is famous.I developed, practiced, and refined this technique in the early 1960s while a student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.If properly asked, many people will gladly give contributions to support conservative student activities. Such people can be found in every community and in every state, including yours.Having taught the formula to students since 1962, I am confident of its success. I maintain an open-door policy with my students. Each student is invited to contact me if the formula doesn't work. No one using it has ever reported anything but success.The First Stage -- Your BudgetThe first step in the Famous Foolproof Fundraising Formula is to make a complete annual budget for your program or organization. This system works for funding single projects, but you'll raise a lot more money if you don't have to repeat the process for each project.The budget should be reasonably detailed and easy to understand. Briefly and simply outline your budget so a person not affiliated with your organization can understand each entry. For example, don't put down an item as “LI SCHOOL.” Instead, write “Leadership Institute's Youth Leadership School training” or “Leadership Institute's Student Publications School registration.”The budget should be organized by category with a final total at the bottom. The budget should not be more than one typed page.Brainstorm with others to list all the appropriate expenditures for the coming year.In the Appendix are sample budgets for an independent newspaper, a campus political club, and a speakers program. Your specific budget requirements will vary, but these provide a good base from which to start.The Second Stage -- Identifying the Most Likely DonorsNext, make a list of people, both in and out of the local community, whom you believe are most likely to make substantial contributions to your cause. Convene a few students who will be working closely with you. Have another brainstorming session. Start by listing the best fundraising prospects already known to students in your group. Then think of other sources of potential donors who may be willing to contribute to conservative, campus-related activities.Some wealthy conservatives may already be members of your college or university board of trustees or board of supervisors. Others may already be well known as donors to the university or to the alumni association.Look around. Perhaps the recently built Picklesimer Hall is named for the Picklesimer family, generous donors to your university. Are members of this family strongly conservative? If so, make them a priority for your fundraising visits.Other potential donors would be those who have contributed to conservative candidates for public office.Note: It is contrary to federal law to use the names and addresses of donors to federal candidates or federal political action committees for any commercial purpose if those names and addresses are obtained from the Federal Election Commission.“Commercial” includes fundraising! You may not legally use FEC lists for fundraising purposes. You'd break federal law and be subject to fines and criminal penalties if you did.However, at the state level, the required funding reports for candidates, political action committees, and political party organizations are not under any such prohibition in most states.Find out which office in your state capital receives the reports filed by candidates, political action committees, and political parties. (Often it's the Secretary of State's office or the State Election Board). Then ascertain if it is legitimate in your state to use information from this source for fundraising purposes.If it's legal in your state, you may go to the appropriate state agency and copy the names and addresses of each donor who has given substantial amounts of money to conservative candidate, political action committees, and party committees.Even in the case of federal elections, the candidates and the campaign organizations have their own copies of lists they previously submitted to the Federal Election Commission in their periodic reporting records. A friendly former candidate, winner or not, may legally allow you to use his list and to select from it the names and addresses of likely donors. Another ready source of potential donors are conservative leaders in your local community. Ask them who likely donors are and how they can be contacted.Conservative professors at your school may suggest some local business contacts, whom you may add to your prospective donor base.Even if you don't have many of the above sources, you can probably find enough good prospective donors to launch this program. With just a handful of conservative students at your brainstorming session, you should be able to come up with many good prospects.Do not spend more than a day or so creating your initial list of prospects. You should pick out the top half dozen or so, those you think most likely to give substantial contributions to your organization.Next, designate teams of two, preferably a guy and a gal, to make an appointment with each person on the list.The Third Stage -- Meeting With Potential DonorsMany of your potential donors will have secretaries. A secretary can be a strong ally if treated with respect. The secretary of a potential donor will probably ask, “Well, what is it you want to come talk about?” You should be reasonably frank with them.Respond with something to the effect of: “We are very concerned about outrageous left wing activity on our campus. We'd like to talk with you about the problems we are currently having with liberals at our school. We would like to show you some of the things we are trying to do to correct this imbalance. And we would very much appreciate having your thoughts on the matter.”The team of two should arrive slightly ahead of time for the appointment. Dress better than average for the students on your campus. This will vary from area to area and from campus to campus.At New College in Sarasota, Florida, a little better than average means that you wear shoes. On a few other campuses, a little better than average would mean that you would wear a suit and tie.However, don't go overdressed to meet a potential donor. A student who solicits funds in a three piece, heavy wool suit with a big gold-link watch chain looped across his vest may not be a credible student leader.Talented people are highly successful in personal solicitation. You should not send out utter klutzes who have not brushed their teeth since 1997. Donors respond best to intelligent students who have a pleasant demeanor and a solid plan of action.When you arrive, introduce yourselves. Take some time to discuss with him where you're coming from philosophically. Describe the problems you are fighting on campus. Ask him about his philosophy. Most people like to talk about their ideas. And, this will alert you to issues which motivate him to act.If the student government has recently paid $5,000 or $10,000 apiece to bring speakers, such as, say, communist activist Angela Davis or an environmental wacko to your campus, express your outrage about this.If your school newspaper has written some particularly outrageous left wing articles, cite them or, better still, take them along with you and show them at this time. Or mention any unfair, leftist professors or college administrators who persecute students who stand up for free enterprise or traditional values.You'll be surprised how many business people and conservative donors are knowledgeable about what's happening on your campus.Then take out your one page budget. Hand it to him. Let him examine it carefully.Prospects are usually people of substantial means. They quickly understand a clearly written budget. They'll be able to judge whether or not it's realistic. Be sure not to include items for all-expense-paid trips to the Bahamas for sun and fun. Present a realistic and sensible budget like the examples presented in the appendix.Ask him, “Does the budget contain any items which aren't clear? May we clarify any entries for you?” The prospect may well come up with one or two things which he doesn't understand.Be prepared to defend the various budget items, showing why each is a responsible use of money. If you're getting a cheap rate on something, point it out.Once you're sure he understands the budget, look him directly in the eye and, with a pleasant expression on your face, say this important sentence:“We were hoping you'd be able to help us financially to meet this budget.”After you've said this, keep your pleasant facial expression and wait. You wait. And you wait silently.If you have to wait thirty long seconds, wait. Silence is your ally. At some point, the prospect will eventually respond to what you've said.His reply will fall into one of these three categories:1) He may remark, “Well, I think it's a good idea, here's a contribution.” And he'll make a contribution or pledge right there.2) Or he may say some version of: “I'm sorry, I can't help you. I've got cancer, my wife is divorcing me, business is terrible, and my children are now being prosecuted for various crimes.” If a prospect says he just can't give you any money, thank him for his time and input, then leave.3) However, by far the most frequent response you will receive is something like: “How much are you asking me to contribute?” or “What are we talking about in terms of money?” In other words, the person will ask you how much to give.Don't bother to solicit anyone for a student activity whom you couldn't ask for at least $100. Some people should be in the $500 to $1,000 range or even higher. Always have a figure in mind before you meet with a prospective donor.Most students have never asked a perfect stranger for $500 or $1,000. But you shouldn't feel reluctant or awkward about this. Well-known donors are often asked personally to make contributions. Major donors are not ashamed or embarrassed to be asked for $1,000. So you shouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed to ask them for $1,000.If you're in doubt as to whether to ask a person for $100 or $500, ask for $500. If in doubt between asking for $1,000 or $2,000, ask for $2,000. Always ask for the higher amount in the range you think reasonable.My experience has shown that rarely do donors give more than they are asked for; however, they often give less.You may happen to misjudge a person's ability to give. You may ask him for $2,000 although he's never given more than $100 to anybody in his life. This won't grossly offend him.In fact, he may even chuckle, saying, “I don't know where you got the idea I could give $2,000. I've never given more than $100.” Then ask for the $100.In the overwhelming majority of cases, when a donor prospect asks you, “What are we talking about in terms of money?” the dynamics of the Famous Foolproof Fundraising Formula make it inevitable that you will leave with some donation or a pledge.Sometimes a donor will say “I'm sorry. I'm happy to give you the money, but I can't give you anything until my stock dividend check comes in on the fifteenth of the month.” Offer to come back at his convenience to pick up his donation.In any case, whether donors give you a check, cash, or a pledge, you should thank them genuinely. “We really appreciate what you've done for us. Because of you, we'll make a great impact on campus.”The Fourth Stage -- Expanding Your Base of Good ProspectsNow you have the check in hand or a good pledge. And you've expressed thanks. The next step is to say, “Sir, there is another thing you can do to help us. We'd greatly appreciate it if you would suggest others whom we might go see who might be willing to help us meet our goal.”The donor has already made an investment in your program, actually or with a pledge. He made that donation because he wants you to succeed. If you don't get enough money to succeed, his $100 or $500 or $2,000 may be wasted.When you ask new donors for additional names, the great majority will give some to you. They will know many potential donors whom you do not know.We all have different friends. Your new donor may know, among others, a conservative little old lady who lives at the edge of town in that ramshackle house with the broken down fence who happens to own 10,000 acres of Colorado timber on which they have just opened a big gold mine.Your new donor will provide you with names. He'll say, “Well there's Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Picklesimer.” Make sure you carefully write down everything about the new prospects. “This is Dr. Jack Johnson, the orthopedic surgeon. This is Mrs. Elvira Picklesimer, a widow, who lives out on Green Hollow Road near the corner of Hammond Highway.”Make sure you have each new donor identified very clearly. You don't want to go back to your new donor and ask, “Who is this person again? I can't find him.”A new donor will give you a few names, ordinarily a handful. When he has finished listing names, ask him, “Can you think of any more?” Very often that first extra name will be the best prospect of all. When the new donor finally runs out of names after you've prodded him a couple of times, you will have, on average, six or seven new names.Almost everyone who gives you a donation will come up with additional names.There is some other psychology involved in this. The donor thinks, “Well, these kids just hit me up; I'm going to send them down to hit up my old buddy Charlie, too.” Your new donor will have friends with whom he does business or plays bridge or golf. Perhaps the donor will smile and send you to a friend of his who has recently raised money from him.Once you have the names, look through the list and say, “Well, I know Dr. Johnson because he's the one I went to last winter when I had a broken leg. And we know Mr. Kelly because Susie's father buys a car every year from Mr. Kelly's Chevrolet dealership. But I don't know Mrs. Picklesimer and I don't know this one or that one.”Ask if your donor would be willing to call the ones you don't know and give you an introduction over the phone. Say, “That way, when we go to see them we won't be complete strangers.”Again, in the overwhelming majority of cases, because the donor already has an investment in your project, he will be willing to makes these calls for you.Sometimes a donor will tell you he'll write a letter to introduce you. However, writing a letter is a big effort for most people. They delay writing letters, and many times, despite good intentions, never send the letters.A telephone call is much easier than a letter. But, if your new donor says he's going to write letters, say, “Thank you very much. Would you please send me a copy of each letter so I'll know when to follow up?” You can then be sure when and if the letters are sent.You will probably walk away from that first successful meeting with a contribution or a pledge and a list of other prospects.Immediately after this meeting, take a moment to write down anything personal you observed about the contributor: his key interests, his wife's name, number of children, hobbies, secretary's name, award certificates on the wall, etc. Write and keep a short summary of what was said. Refer to these notes before any subsequent communications with the donor.Within 24 or no more than 48 hours, write a warm letter of thanks to your new donor. It's been my experience that any conservative student group which sets out on this kind of program soon has more good prospects for giving money than they have time to go out and ask.The three requirements for achieving any project are time, talent, and money.It doesn't cost much to raise funds by personal solicitation. Because you are volunteers, gasoline may be your only expenditure.You're limited only by the amount of time and talent you can put into this project. Within those limitations, the sky's the limit.You will find there's a lot of money out there. Conservatives are genuinely concerned about what's happening on campus. They're concerned about what's wrong in our country. They want to help you make changes.As you use this process, you will find that many people are delighted to see you.You may make friendships and political alliances with some which will last a lifetime.The Fifth Stage -- Re-prioritizeChoose the next prospect from your list, the one you now think most likely to make a generous donation. Make an appointment and repeat the third and fourth stages.The Sixth Stage -- Building Strong Ties With Your DonorsThe majority of your subsequent communications with your donor should not be about money.Invite your donors to meetings and any functions you organize.Introduce them to prominent guests or visiting campus speakers. Send them your publications and news clippings about your activities. Help them feel linked to your organization. When you make a donor a part of what you do, you make it easy for him to contribute again.My very first personal solicitation of this kind was when I was a junior at rural Woodlawn High School near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We had a very small class of twenty-eight. Our school had never had a football team.We students decided to raise money to pay for equipment in order to field a football team our senior year.Some of us began to raise money through projects such as cake sales. I worked hard on a scrap metal drive, driving a truck to local farms, asking farmers if they had any scrap metal to donate for us to sell.The biggest contribution we received was a check for $500 from a very nice lady over 80 years old. We were astonished at the size of the contribution, since it was not a rich area. And $500 was worth a lot in 1955-56.Before long, we raised enough money to buy the uniforms and equipment necessary for the football team. We scheduled a fried chicken banquet to celebrate.We decided to honor the wonderful little old lady who had given us $500. One of the students created a neatly drawn lifetime pass to the Woodlawn High School football games. We gave the pass, framed, to this lady at the celebration banquet. She was tickled pink.We did not risk a great sum of money by awarding her a lifetime, free pass. But she loved it.Just a couple of years later, this lady gave the school five acres of land adjacent to the school, on which the stadium was built the Woodlawn High School Purple Panther football team played their home games.And the reason she gave that land? Very simple. She felt a strong personal tie with this football team.People will strongly identify with your project if you thank them, involve them, inform them, and credit them with the good results they make possible.On the other hand, if you ask them for money at every meeting, then soon they will dread to hear from you. They will not give you appointments. You will not raise any more money from them.But, if you operate on the basis I have outlined, you will almost surely be successful.When you get each contribution or pledge, you should immediately write a strong thank you letter. If you then give donors a great deal of attention and respect, they will give you, or your campus successors, more money and other help.Quite frankly, most organizations, whether conservative, liberal, charitable, or non-philosophical do a poor job of thanking their donors.Donors motivated by charitable impulses or by philosophical causes, seldom expect to get any personal return or benefit. They give money to improve society, to help their country, or just to assist nice young people.Donors feel put upon when people to whom they give money perpetually pester them for more money. Donors lose interest if an organization's entire communication with them is always the same: gimme, gimme, gimme.Some friends of mine who head conservative organizations claim it's harder to raise money now, which may be true. However, it's not true that there's less money being given for conservative causes.I probably have as wide a view of what's going on across the country in conservative organizations as anybody. I can assure you there isn't a decline in the amount of money being given.There are more people giving more money to conservative causes than ever. But they necessarily give to a smaller percentage of the growing number of organizations which solicit them. More groups mean more competition.Organizations fail financially if they do not persuade their donors they are doing a good job.Consider all the party organizations and the focused-issue organizations like right to work, right to life, or right to keep and bear arms. Add in the traditional values groups, including the religious ministries which focus on conservative, traditional values. Billions of dollars are given each year to conservative causes.There's money out there you can find. All you have to do is follow the systematic, step-by-step approach I've outlined for you.You'll discover the amount of money you can raise is limited only by the amount of time you have to go out and persuasively ask.There's an old saying in the insurance industry that the most successful insurance agent is not the one who sells to the highest percentage of people he asks, but the agent who persuasively asks the greatest number of good prospects to buy insurance.So don't be distressed if you go to 2 or 3 people who do not give you money. Not everybody will. But if you've developed a good list from the outset, by the time you've met with four or five potential donors, one of them will have given you both money and new names.If you ever meet with failure after having followed the steps outlined above, please call or write me at the Leadership Institute. As I wrote at the start of this guide, no one who has followed this formula has ever told me it did not work.Appendix 1Independent Student Newspaper: Annual BudgetREVENUE AMOUNTGrants $1,600.00Contributions 3,200.00Advertising 1,500.00Direct Mail 2,000.00Subscriptions 370.00TOTAL $8,670.00EXPENSES AMOUNTLeadership Institute's Student Publication School registration $350.00Printing 3,760.00Typesetting/Layout 550.00Postage 150.00Office Supplies 80.00Travel 270.00Photocopying 275.00Photography 205.00Telephone 280.00Direct Mail 1,000.00Rent/Utilities 1,750.00TOTAL $8,670.00Appendix 2Campus Club: Annual BudgetREVENUE AMOUNTStudent Auction (servant for a day) $1,400.00T-Shirt Sales 1,180.00Dues at $1.00 per member 520.00Contributions 6,600.00TOTAL $9,700.00EXPENDITURES AMOUNTState Convention Delegation Expenses $3,000.00Leadership Institute's Youth Leadership School training 350.00Paper/Photo Copying 780.00Postage 215.00Telephone 1,050.00Direct Mail 1,250.00Facility/Audio Rental 595.00Charter Fee 300.00Refreshments 1,080.00Transportation 220.00Office Supplies 440.00T-Shirts/Buttons 420.00TOTAL $9,700.00Appendix 3Independent Club Speakers Program: Annual BudgetREVENUE AMOUNTAllocation from Student Government Funds $11,000.00Contributions at Events 970.00Personal Solicitation 8,300.00TOTAL $20,270.00EXPENDITURES AMOUNTSpeakers Honoraria $14,700.00Newspaper 250.00Posters 650.00Fliers 280.00Postage 540.00Phone - Long Distance 160.00Student Transportation 150.00Speakers Lodging 860.00Speakers Travel Expenses 2,190.00Audio Equipment Rentals 250.00Hall Rentals 240.00TOTAL $20,270.00
Problems of Success
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
Problems of Success
Because education tends to lead to success in life, you are here at Liberty University to get an education -- or at least that's what your family and Dr. Falwell believe.What you really learn and how much you really learn are largely up to you, of course.It helps a lot if you already have a thirst for knowledge. Some people seem born to learn and happy to learn.Others want to learn no more than is absolutely necessary just to get by in the world. For them, all study is boring, and study is even aggravating, because to study amounts to an admission of ignorance. And how many people do you know who are naturally happy to admit their lack of knowledge?Even a poor teacher can do well with students who already have a thirst for knowledge. But the best teachers are those who somehow can inspire in students that thirst for knowledge which will lead their students to success for the rest of their lives.Education involves learning facts, of course. But it also includes learning how to study, how to think, and how to make things happen.Someone once said there are three types of people in the world: Those who make things happen; those who watch what happens; and those who never know what happened.I hope that you are among the many at this large and growing university who already have or soon will develop that thirst for knowledge which will enable you to become one of those people who will make things happen.Liberty University has right now, in this hall, a great many people who will be future leaders of our country. Graduates of Liberty are likely to be better leaders than students now at most other colleges because, in addition to academic learning, your college experience reinforces your moral foundation for a God-centered life.Let us presume for a moment that you, personally, have become well-educated, that your thirst for knowledge has enabled you to learn how to make things happen, that you have already achieved a number of remarkable successes, that many people recognize you as a rising leader.Are you home free? Are your problems over? Not hardly.You see, success brings its own, unique set of problems. The Bible often gives examples of how pride goeth before a fall. A run of success, like power, tends to corrupt.That is not to suggest that you shouldn't strive to be successful. Far from it. You have an obligation to put your God-given talents to their best use.In college, you should strive to be the type of student your professors find it a thrill to teach. In business, you should become someone with whom it is a pleasure to work. In politics, you should act effectively for your deeply held principles.Back in 1982, I asked Dr. Falwell to comment on a saying I was teaching to young conservatives. It goes like this: "Pray as if it all depended on God. Work as if it all depended on you."Dr. Falwell immediately replied that the saying is theologically sound. To that same question, several other prominent religious leaders gave me the same answer.So there's no question that intelligent, moral people should strive for success. And striving prudently for success quite often actually does bring success. But when you strive for success, as you should, you should always keep in your mind that success brings with it its own, new set of problems. Be prepared in advance to deal with the problems of success.Foremost among the problems of success is the temptation, once you're really successful, to believe that you are so special that the rules no longer apply to you, that you're so important you can do as you please, without regard to the standards, ethics, and morality which contributed to your success.For a year now, the news media have heavily covered the troubles of a prominent national lobbyist named Jack Abramoff. You've probably heard a lot about him, almost all of it bad, very bad.Jack Abramoff made tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, he has pled guilty to numerous felonies and is almost certainly going to jail for a number of years.The scandals surrounding him may destroy the careers of a number of politicians and could have a major effect in next November's elections.You probably have heard nothing good at all about Jack Abramoff. But I'm here to tell you the whole story, which is not to be found in the headlines. His entire story should be highly educational to you and to any other young conservative who strives for success.Jack Abramoff had a sterling reputation. Yes, a sterling reputation.I met and trained Jack Abramoff during the 1980 Youth For Reagan effort, which I oversaw as a volunteer. My faculty and I trained young men and women in five Reagan Youth Staff Schools that year and hired 30 of the best for campus organizing in the 1980 fall campaign.Jack Abramoff, then a student at Brandeis University and College Republican state chairman of Massachusetts, was clearly one of the most outstanding of the 300 graduates of those two-day training schools.I personally offered Jack one of our 30 field staff jobs. Jack graciously declined and told me, "I'm going back to Massachusetts and organize enough students there to carry Massachusetts for Reagan."I laughed and replied, "Jack, if you carry Massachusetts for Reagan, we'll win in a national landslide."He did, and we did. Governor Reagan beat President Jimmy Carter in Massachusetts by 2,421 votes. Jack's campus effort garnered many more than that number of student absentee ballots for Reagan there.The next year, partly on the strength of his remarkable success in winning Massachusetts for Reagan, Jack was elected chairman of the College Republican National Committee. There again he succeeded spectacularly.In 1980, the number of College Republican (CR) clubs on the nation's campuses had grown from 250 to 1,002. In 1981, Jack's campus organizing efforts increased the number of CR clubs to 1,100 -- a new record which remained unsurpassed until very recent years.While a national CR officer, Jack widened his network of friends among conservative Republicans, impressing everyone. Jack was courageously conservative on all the issues: limited government, free enterprise, strong national defense, and traditional moral values.Moreover, Jack obviously took his Orthodox Jewish faith seriously. He kept kosher. He would not travel on the sabbath. He deplored profanity and vulgarity.Jack dropped out of politics for some years to make movies, including at least one which had some worldwide success, an anti-Communist action drama titled "Red Scorpion."Then he returned to political activity and explained he had found that, without major financial resources, he couldn't control his movies' content because the industry inserted into them, against his will, gratuitous profanity and vulgarity.Back in the political arena, Jack benefited greatly from the magnificent reputation he had earned. He had proved himself highly intelligent, highly principled, and highly competent. Clearly he was a hard worker and a talented leader.He joined one of the best known and most successful legal and lobbying firms in the Washington, D.C., area. Because Jack had built a very wide circle of friends in the political process, those of us who had known him since the early 1980s expected him to be successful as a lobbyist. He started up an Orthodox Jewish school and spent a lot of his own time and money on it. His reputation continued as clean as a hound's tooth. Fast forward to today. His reputation lies in tatters. The wealth he reportedly gained as a lobbyist may be eaten up entirely as a result of his legal problems.He'll soon be broke -- and in jail.Many who relied on the sterling reputation Jack built from his youth stand now accused as guilty of consorting with this sleazy character, Jack Abramoff.That's a bum rap against some conservatives who relied on his good reputation. He may have betrayed and damaged them, but they should not be dragged down by the guilt-by-association method.Fortunately for me, I never had any business relations with him or any contact with his lobbying activities. But before allegations regarding his business and lobbying activities arose, I and everyone I know who knew Jack since he was a college student 26 years ago would have given him a highly favorable recommendation.Those who knowingly consort with sleazy people are culpable. Those who associate with people whom they know have good reputations are not. That does not, however, prevent the unfair use of the guilt-by-association technique by the opponents of even the most scrupulous people.Political activists and leaders have no secure defense against the possibility that some associate who has a fine reputation will somehow succumb to disgraceful temptations.Politicians and news media usually hostile to everything conservative revel in the disasters which now surround Jack Abramoff. Clearly, the left intends to use Abramoff to damage or destroy as many effective conservatives as they can, most notably former House Majority Leader Tom Delay.No surprise in that. Piranhas reveal themselves through their feeding frenzies.When the newspapers began to publish and re-publish excerpts from Jack's emails regarding his lobbying business, I could not believe he had written them. Surely, I thought, someone has made up those emails to smear Jack.Sadly, over time it has become clear that he has behaved in ways highly disappointing to those, like me, who knew and admired him from his youth.A principled person does not discuss his clients with contempt. A careful person does not send out personally damning emails into the immortal cyberworld. A moral person does not support opposing sides in order to profit from each. An ethical person does not defraud his associates in business. A loyal person does not set up his friends for embarrassment.Jack Abramoff's fall from grace is not unique.Sadly, I know too many examples of people who built good reputations and extensive political networks who changed dramatically and for the worse when they decided to earn their livings through lobbying or political consulting.A great many people can't resist temptations to increase their income. They hire themselves out to people or causes they would have spurned in the days when they built their reputations by consistent adherence to well-defined political and moral principles. Some sink mighty low.Jack has proven again the wisdom often taught me by my mother and my grandmother, "A good reputation is the hardest thing to build and the easiest thing to destroy."In political activity, when one abandons long-held principles and starts measuring success only by revenue, one should have the decency not to drag down one's formerly trusting friends.Those whose trust is betrayed are the victims. The victims deserve our sympathy and understanding, not condemnation.In his statement after pleading guilty, Jack Abramoff said that his greatest regret was the damage he had done to those who trusted him. Right. But when he was raking in those millions of dollars, while privately showering his clients with contempt, he didn't give much thought to the consequences.Blinded by his own success, Jack succumbed to some very human and very common temptations -- temptations which should be fought and resisted by any highly successful person.Think about this. What if Jack Abramoff had resisted all the temptations spread before him? What if he had decided to work only for clients and causes in accord with his previously long-held conservative principles?Would he have made as much money as rapidly? Probably not.On the other hand, had Jack stuck to his principles, he would certainly have achieved some financial success. He would have kept his sterling reputation. He would not now be headed to jail. And he would not have brought scandal to his friends or disaster to his family.I know of only three ways to learn the lessons of life.1) You can carefully study the experience of others. You can't observe everything, but you can, by wide reading and formal education, learn from the experiences of your contemporaries as well as those who lived ages ago. You can learn from them all.2) By observation, by paying attention to what goes on around you, you can learn from the experience of others. Careful observation benefits anyone in any field, from sports to science to politics. Lessons from the lives of Jack Abramoff and many others are unfolding before your eyes. Keep those eyes open, and you can learn useful lessons of life every day.3) Finally, you can learn though your personal experience. That's learning by trial and error, better known as the school of hard knocks.Personal trial and error is usually the hardest way to learn anything, though I can't deny that that school teaches its lessons well. Its drawback, however, is that by the time you graduate from the school of hard knocks you may be too old to go to work.No matter how diligent a student you are of the school of hard knocks, you cannot learn by first-hand experience everything you should know.So if you leave this thriving Liberty University and have the success which your family, Dr. Falwell, your professors, and I all hope you will have, please keep in mind that you will then have to face a new set of problems, the problems of success.
How to Present a Public Program
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
How to Present a Public Program
Download the PDF version here. Introduction This manual is written especially for leaders of independent conservative student organizations or student divisions of campaigns who use public programs as a part of an overall strategy to advance a cause or a candidate of their choice. However, most techniques are equally applicable by anyone organizing public programs such as student government, speakers committees, professional clubs, educational groups, and entertainment programs, to name a few. Purposes and Types of Public Programs A campus political organization should schedule about one program a month and two or three major public program presentations a year in addition to your regular meetings. 1. Simple open programs These smaller, monthly programs educate and keep group members involved and interested in the group. Such programs may help to recruit new members. No special effort has to be made to bring in non-students, although each program should be announced in the campus paper, on bulletin boards, in a Facebook group or page, as well as emailed out to members. Ideas for smaller programs include: A school official A local newspaper editor or wire service reporter A panel of club members from an affiliate club on another campus A movie or documentary A local business or professional leader A local political party leader speaking on party matters An author A debate watch party Many groups have considerable success with informal discussion meetings. The group might meet in the student union building or at a local restaurant and invite a speaker with some special knowledge about a topic of current interest. The speaker gives a fifteen- or twenty-minute presentation and then leads an open-ended question-and-answer period with club members. The club should welcome speakers on different topics to expose the club members to a useful and interesting array of opinions. 2. Major public programs Major public programs should draw an audience well beyond a group's membership. They can convince undecided students and build enthusiasm among your group's members. Many major political leaders first got involved in politics after personal contact with a policy expert, candidate, or an important government official during a public program on campus. An important function of these public programs is their use as media events. This allows you to affect those who didn't attend the event itself as well as raise your group's profile on campus. You probably won't change many minds among the people who come. Most people who take the time to go to a political rally or publicized speech already have their minds made up. Therefore, pay particular attention to attracting media coverage with this event. Some examples of events where you want to maximize attendance and publicity are: A nationally-known conservative speaker A governor, senator, congressman, or other major office holder Candidates or potential candidates State or national party leaders National leaders of political organizations Visiting columnists Visiting economists or stock market experts Foreign policy experts Foreign diplomats Debates between Republican and Democratic officials Political rallies Films shown for educational purposes, for public relations, or for profit. Be sure to choose your major public program speakers carefully. Select those who will effectively promote your club's philosophy. You're not in business to provide audiences for your opposition. Your major event can feature a single speaker, or several who engage in a panel discussion. Seminars of half- a-day or full-day duration, while requiring greater effort and organization, can also draw a crowd. Major events require considerable time for planning and preparation. So you will probably not want to host more than two or three such major events per year. Planning the Event 1. Location and facilities Before any event takes place, your club should inventory the potential meeting locations. Most colleges have a list of locations available and will give it to you upon request. You can eliminate a lot of last minute headaches and be prepared to make quick decisions if you already have a sheet which lists the capacity, audio/visual capabilities, the cost, and scheduling authority's contact information for every potential site. Always underestimate crowds for a public program. It is far better to have an audience of 175 packed into a room which seats only 150 than to have an audience of 200 in a 300 seat auditorium. In one case, the newspaper headline would read, “Conservative speaks to overflow crowd,” and in the other case, even with greater turnout, the story might read: “Sparse turnout for conservative speaker at the university.” If you have to apologize, you'd rather apologize to an overflow crowd about a room a little too small than to your speaker for all the empty seats in a larger hall. The ideal situation is to have an expandable room. Many rooms have dividers which can easily be slid back. If you can reserve such a room, do so. When Ronald Reagan was scheduled to speak in the Assembly Center (which seats 7,000 when set up for a speaker) at Louisiana State University during his 1980 presidential campaign, his youth coordinator set up curtains to shrink the auditorium to seat only 2,000. On three occasions, the curtains had to be moved and more chairs brought in. If you have to apologize, you'd rather apologize to an overflow crowd about a room a little too small than to your speaker for all the empty seats in a larger hall. The ideal situation is to have an expandable room. Many rooms have dividers which can easily be slid back. If you can reserve such a room, do so. When Ronald Reagan was scheduled to speak in the Assembly Center (which seats 7,000 when set up for a speaker) at Louisiana State University during his 1980 presidential campaign, his youth coordinator set up curtains to shrink the auditorium to seat only 2,000. On three occasions, the curtains had to be moved and more chairs brought in. The event started nearly half an hour late. The constant increases in the seating area and requests for people to make more room because far more people had arrived than were expected created enormous expectation and excitement. Ronald Reagan himself dubbed it the “most successful event in my campaign to date.” Other options include providing a large screen TV and loudspeakers in another room for those who are not able to fit in the main hall. Since some reporters may arrive late, make sure you reserve enough good space for them. Place them near the back of the room to ensure they are capturing the crowd in their photos. Mark it off as the “media section.” Television cameras may require a raised platform in the middle of the room. Other considerations in choosing a meeting room include central location, easy walking distance from parking and dormitories, a well-known location, good acoustics, and availability of a good sound system. For major events, have a portable emergency sound system available just in case the built-in system suffers an attack of the gremlins. If your speaker is particularly effective in a question and answer period, another type of public program presentation which can be successful is an open-air speech at mid-day in a campus area with much foot traffic. A good portable public address system and a slightly raised platform can draw a good crowd. 2. Invitations When trying to obtain a “big name” speaker for a major public program, the three most important factors are advance notice, flexibility in dates, and solid guarantees of a well-organized, well-attended event. Invite speakers well ahead of time. Advance planning gives you time to draw a big crowd and fire up your troops for the event. Major speakers often require booking months in advance. Be clear about what dates and times are not good. Avoid weekends, especially on commuter campuses. Events the week before mid-terms and final exams could also be problematic. Check the calendar of campus activities and give an invitee as many alternative dates as you can. Avoid scheduling your event on dates that conflict with: Large sporting events Finals or midterms (or surrounding) School breaks Major campus events Local campus evets Holidays Your speaker will want to know this is a serious invitation which, if accepted, will result in a successful event. You should carefully type on club letterhead (if you don't have it, make it) all the details, including: The name of the sponsoring organization The appromimate size of the expected crowd Nature of the meeting (rally, dinner, debate, panel, or featured speaker) The suggested topics of the event (You can leave the speaker some freedom to choose topics if you wish, but it's still a good idea to suggest a few.) Wheather there will be a question and answer period following the speech Your intention to pay travel expenses and accommodations The payment you can offer, if any Opportunities for news media coverage Possible auxiliary activities, if your speaker has time If your group and the speaker share the same cause, and your program will advance this cause, let the speaker know that, too. Prominent people who know you and are known to the speaker might serve as references for your group. Ask these people to endorse your invitation with letters, emails, or phone calls to your invitee. A short history of other successful major programs your group has sponsored will help persuade a speaker to accept your invitation. If you don't know how to get in touch with the speaker you desire, the Leadership Institute may be able to help. The Leadership Institute (LI) helps independent conservative groups bring speakers to campus. If you have a specific person in mind, LI may be able to help you get in touch with the speaker to arrange the details of the visit. After you invite the speaker, it is a good idea to phone his or her office a week after mailing the invitation to be sure it was received and to ask if the speaker's staff have any questions you can answer. Once the speaker accepts, ask him to send you photos, biographical information, and useful information about the topic he will cover. After the event is set, maintain regular contact with the scheduler. Phone the speaker's office a week in advance and again a day in advance of the event to be sure everything is still scheduled. 3. Filling the Speaker's Schedule After a speaker has accepted your invitation, find out how much of his time will be available for other activities. Then try to schedule his time in order to get the maximum benefit from his visit. If the invited speaker has the time, you can expand his visit into a full day of events. Do not commit the speaker to any additional activities until he or his staff has approved them. Typical extra activities can include:?? An exclusive interview with the campus radio station or newspaper A lecture to a class Informal talks with students in the Student Union or wherever students congregate Meetings and interviews with student government and campus leaders to learn of their concerns Discussions, receptions, or meals with club members (very important to build enthusiasm) Interviews with local newspapers and appearances on local TV programs or talk radio shows. Operation Hometown – Arrange to have photographs taken of the speaker with club activists. Separate club members by hometown. When the speaker has a free moment, take casual photos of each group with the speaker and mail or email them, with appropriate identifying captions, to each group's hometown papers. Photos of local people with important public officials are almost irresistible to many local newspaper editors. Many opportunities for creative activity surround public appearances. Advance men for the late President John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign regularly set up flimsy barricades at airports, ostensibly to hold back the crowds. Crowds assembled behind the barricades. Aides posing as members of the crowd would push over the flimsy barriers at the moment the candidate arrived, allowing the crowd in a “spontaneous demonstration of enthusiasm” to surge forward and greet the candidate. All the while, TV cameras were recording the dramatic scene for the evening news. These ideas may be applied to other campus programs and not just your major events. Give every event you host an air of excitement. 4. Physical arrangements Even though you may wisely have reserved an undersized room, it is a good idea to set up fewer chairs than there is space for. Store extra chairs in an adjacent room or in the back of the meeting room. As the room begins to fill, set up additional chairs as necessary. This assures that every seat will be filled, starting with the front rows. When appropriate, decorate the room brightly with crepe paper, balloons, and posters. Ask your speaker if they have any Audio/ Visual requirements. Common AV requirements include: Projector Screen Laptop for flashdrive plug-in Internet access for videos or emails Microphones Audio speakers Extra microphone for Q & A Find out if he prefers to speak at a lectern and if he wants a lectern microphone (if a sound system is necessary). Wireless microphones are nice for speakers who like more freedom to walk around. Reserve a section in the back for the media, and make sure someone responsible gets the names of the reporters who do come. Live or recorded music helps to build spirit and enthusiasm, particularly as the crowd files in. Make arrangements for an American flag on stage. You should also provide a pitcher of ice water and a glass for the speaker. For a major event, or even a smaller, formal event, have someone offer an invocation and someone else lead the Pledge of Allegiance. Drawing a Crowd You can do many specific things to attract a crowd, but remember the most important fundamentals: Select an interesting program and spread the information regarding the event. 1. Advertising 1. Write and print up a flyer and send a campus-wide email inviting all students to attend, with bullet points explaining why they will benefit from attending. Place this flyer under every dormitory door the night before the meeting. Distribute this flyer by hand in student parking areas as commuter students arrive on campus. 2. Write a “Dear Faculty Member” letter announcing the meeting and explaining why it is important and why students ought to attend. Ask the faculty member to announce the time and place of the meeting in class. Place these letters, signed by a faculty member or student leader, in every faculty member's campus mailbox. 3. Avoid paid advertising. Take advantage of every possibility of public service announcements and earned publicity. Usually paid advertising is not cost effective and should be used only by campus speakers committees which are not on tight budgets. 4. Handmade posters are much more effective on campus than printed posters. Once a person reads one printed poster, he may ignore all the others. Handmade posters or memes, if clever, will each be read. 2. Personal Outreach 1. Many students will come if asked by a fellow student as a personal favor. If your club has developed a canvass system to identify and mobilize supportive students, every floor leader should invite every supporter and uncommitted student on his floor. 2. Make personal visits to professors in departments such as speech, economics, and government, and ask them to announce your program in class. Tailor your presentation to the particular interest of the professor. Sometimes teachers give extra credit to students who write analyses of the content or style of the speech. You should suggest this. 3. Certainly the supportive local party organizations should be invited. This would include party committees and their affiliated groups such as auxiliaries for high school students, women, and ethnic groups. 3. Media Outreach 1. Notify local journalists on and off campus, including broadcast and print media, about the event. Be sure your story is submitted well in advance of any press deadline. Personally follow-up your press releases with a phone call. 2. Personally invite local print and broadcast media with a phone call a few days before your program. Similarly, invite any non-hostile, local political bloggers. This is a helpful way to remind them of the event. Even if they are unable to send personnel to cover the event, if made aware of the program, they will be more receptive to subsequent news releases. 3. A show of interest among the public may also spark media interest if citizens call them asking for details of the event. To help show this interest, have friends call media outlets and ask for information. 4. Many media outlets will not report on the event, but they may print an announcement of the event in their paper if it is open to the public. Many universities and colleges now cater to local residents and non-students and encourage them to attend public forums or seminars featuring guest speakers on campus. 4. Coalition Outreach 1. Many other clubs may be interested in the topic. For instance, if the program will include a discussion of agricultural policy, the Future Farmers of America would be interested. If the commercialization of space will be addressed, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and other engineering groups should be contacted, etc. Make sure other clubs know early enough to put notices in their newsletters and on their bulletin boards. 2. Co-sponsoring a program with one or more organizations can sometimes help swell a crowd. But this should be done only if having co-sponsors will actually increase the crowd or media coverage. Be wary of having a bunch of do-nothings share your credit while providing nothing in return. Don't forget to invite allied groups from other campuses. 5. Social Media Outreach 1. Create a Facebook event page and ask everyone involved to invite their online network to attend. You can share the link to the event page on other student group Facebook pages and local conservative pages inviting them to attend and spread the word. 2. Share the link to the event page on Twitter using hashtags that will reach your local target demographic. 3. Consider sharing your event on Snapchat. Although this won't get you national attention, Snapchat may share it locally. 6. Concluding thoughts on outreach 1. Controversy draws a crowd. Don't worry if your opponents chalk up the sidewalks denouncing your speaker; open opposition creates student interest. 2. Some who disagree with your speaker can be specially invited too, unless they are likely to be truly disruptive. Managing the Public Program 1. Before the program begins Lighting is often a big problem at public programs. Your speaker should stand in the best-lit place in the room. Sometimes you will have to rent a spotlight which will beam at him over the heads of the audience. Always hang a group banner behind speaker to maximize group exposure and to get good photos. Never place a speaker in front of a window through which light is shining behind him. Never place a speaker in front of a mirror which will reflect back lights from elsewhere in the room. Never place a speaker in front of a turned-on light affixed to the wall behind him. Designate some people as ushers to oversee seating, answer questions, and distribute program or campaign flyers (if any). The ushers should also be on the lookout for hostile elements which might try to disrupt your public program. Where hecklers are likely, have many of your own group members arrive early, slip in, and seat themselves among the hecklers. This is not to confront or argue with them. Your people's presence prevents the formation of solid blocks of hecklers and dampens their group spirit. Regardless of your ultimate hopes for the event, don't call it a “rally” in your publicity materials. The word “rally” creates the expectation of a highly charged, packed event which is difficult to create. If a speech turns into a rally, so much the better, but raising expectations beforehand is not a good idea. Under-promise and over-perform. An old audience organization technique which is universally successful and not widely known is the diamond seating pattern. Four sharp people should be briefed beforehand to seat themselves in a diamond pattern in the audience. That is, one in the middle of the front row, one half way back on the extreme right, one halfway back on the extreme left, and one in the middle of the back row. In most speeches, there are pauses where applause is appropriate. The job of these four people is to look for these places and to applaud vigorously at the appropriate times. People seated in the audience are thus caught up in the obvious enthusiasm of the people around them. This technique can make even an average presentation into an outstanding success. The red dots indicate the placement of people in the audience for the diamond seating pattern. Another person should be designated to photograph the event. The photos may be useful for your publicity. And the frequent flashing of a camera strobe lends an air of drama and importance to the arrival, departure, and presentation of the speaker. Bright video camera lights turned on the moment the speaker enters heightens this effect. Another person should be appointed to manage the social media for the event. This person should tweet important lines from the speech and post pictures of the event. This will help create a buzz about the event. 2. Introducing the Speaker Do not be casual with your choice of who is to introduce your speaker. Have some competent person prepare a formal, lively introduction. The introducer must understand the audience has come to hear the speaker and not the introducer. Therefore the introduction itself should almost never be more than three minutes long. A good formula to use for a lively short introduction is the T.I.P.: Topic – what is the theme of this program? Importance – why should you be interested in this theme? Person – who is our speaker and why should you care what he has to say on this topic? The master of ceremonies should start the program only a little late. If you wait for late arrivals, those people who arrived on time will lose their enthusiasm. Usually, when programs are delayed in hope of drawing a larger crowd, no one else shows up. This devastating occurrence can be prevented by starting not more than 10 minutes later than the advertised time. Be sure the master of ceremonies encourages the audience to interact with the event via social media. Remind them of the event's hashtag. 3. The Program Have one or two group leaders brief your speaker on local “hot topics” among the students. A brief comment in the speaker's opening remarks about “your exciting victory in last Saturday's football game” will go a long way toward creating a bond with the student audience. For the convenience of the speaker, you should reserve a nearby room with a bathroom and give him 15-20 minutes before the presentation to freshen up and work on his notes. For a student audience, 20 to 40 minutes is a good length for the principal presentation. 4. Questions At most public programs, students expect to be able to ask questions. If the speaker is really good, this will be his chance to shine and to win many converts. You'll probably want to allocate another 30 minutes or so for questions. This should be announced at the beginning of the question period. There is no one best way to handle questions. It depends on many factors: the topic, the student interest, and the local circumstances. If the questioning is likely to be very lively, a firm, tough moderator should be named to keep the program orderly and save the invited speaker or candidate from having to be the “heavy” with any rude people in the audience. Possible ways to handle questions are: Audience asks questions by standing where they are (moderator should repeat questions so everyone can hear) Audience goes to fixed location(s) to ask their questions at a microphone(s) Roving moderator(s) with wireless microphones select questioners from the audience (Phil Donahue style) Audience submits written questions to moderator (less spontaneity) A panel of experts or reporters asks the questions (Better on technical topics. Can be mixed with audience questions also.) Be sure to be respectful of the opposition, especially while holding the microphone. Always prepare for the potential of a hostile crowd during the Q & A. Prepare in advance to have audience members with predetermined questions. To identify these friendly audience members to the moderator, provide them with, say, a red pen. Some thought should be given before the program as to which questions may or should be asked of the speaker. You should never try to limit the discussion to only planted questions, but there are a few reasons why you would want to at least have some planted questions: It helps direct the discussion to areas of importance, especially when the questions have strayed down irrelevant paths. It prevents the speaker from coincidentally taking only hostile questions and thereby appearing to have no support in the audience. In the opposite extreme, if the audience is largely favorable, it gives him a chance to show his stuff by giving good answers to tough questions, especially if you already know he has a good answer to a question. 5. The Recruitment Opportunity One of the world's most common and most serious political blunders is to spend hundreds of hours preparing a huge political rally only to let it come and go without ever getting the names and contact information (phone number, email address, and mailing address) of those in attendance. You may not be able to do extensive recruiting at all public programs, but you should almost always make some attempt to do so. You should also have a membership table clearly visible before and after the program so that students who want more information may talk with your club members. You'll find this a great way to recruit new members. The table should be located just outside or next to the door. Pass around sign-up sheets or ask people to sign in at the front door. If the event is a political rally, it can be expected that most of those present are supporters. The list from such a rally will be an extremely valuable source of new members or volunteers for future activities. Of course, if the speaker is willing to endorse your group and its activities at some point in the program, that will encourage interest. Even programs which are not yours can be a source of new members. Note the questions asked, and speak with the sympathetic questioners after the program. As soon as the event has ended, wrap up by informing the audience they have the option to take a photo with the speaker on stage, in front of your strategically placed banner. If possible, be sure to use a professional camera. Ask the audience not to use their phone cameras to save time. After the Event Capitalizing through publicity During the event, note which reporters came and which media outlets are represented so you can get publicity to the others after the event. For the newspapers, post-event releases summarizing the event and the speaker's points can be helpful. Have people write letters-to-the-editor about the event to increase the exposure. An especially good writer could author an opinion piece on some aspect of the event and ask that it be printed in either the school or a local newspaper. Radio stations are actually the easiest to interest. Use a simple, cheap digital recorder to capture the speech and extract a 15-30 second segment of a forceful statement by the speaker (preferably followed by vigorous applause). You may also interview the speaker after the event and take a clip from there. Then call the radio station and offer them a “radio actuality.” Most radio station news rooms have the ability to record audio segments directly off the phone and replay them in their hourly news summaries. By using a segment you give them over the phone or by email, they can appear to have covered the event without ever sending a reporter. If the speaker has a few extra moments, many stations will record a short interview over the phone. A group member can screen stations in advance to find out who is interested in one of the above options. Be sure to keep all clippings and a record of whatever broadcast publicity you do receive from the media. Many printed articles can be useful as reprints. Send copies of good clippings to your donors. Send the speaker a hand-written Thank You note from the group. Conclusion You'll want to do your best, but realize that no public program is perfect. Very few public programs will be able to utilize all the techniques outlined in this manual. Do not attempt to do more than your available manpower and resources can accomplish. Although there is some risk from the bad publicity if a public program flops, the enormous benefits in building enthusiasm, recruiting, educating, and carrying your message to the public make the effort well worthwhile. Resources Get help with your next campus public program. AtLeadershipInstitute.org/Campusyou can: • Request a speaker grant • Apply for a speaker kit • Find a speaker • Join LI's nationwide network • And much more For more guidance and on the ground support, contact your Leadership Institute Regional Field Coordinator at LeadershipInstitute.org/Campus/map.cfm. You can find more information on how LI can help you succeed on campus at LeadershipInstitute.org/Campus
The Evil Empire on Campus: Leftist Abuses and Bias
Morton C. Blackwell
October 6, 2015
The Evil Empire on Campus: Leftist Abuses and Bias
Download the PDF version here.Leftist Control on CampusOverwhelmingly leftist faculty.Overwhelmingly leftist administrators who actively suppress conservative activities and refuse to address grievances from students who suffer persecution for their conservative beliefs.Leftist domination of most student government associations.Leftist domination of "student courts" which decide issues regarding student government actions and persecute students for activities in behalf of conservative principles.Leftist Indoctrination on CampusLarge numbers of courses presented that explicitly in their catalog descriptions push leftist ideology, but no balance of conservative principles offered in the curriculum.Indoctrination of students in class by faculty who promote socialist ideas and other leftist priorities.Leftist faculty using their class time to preach politics instead of teaching the topic at hand.Faculty who express in class blatant contempt of conservative ideas.Assignment by faculty of one-sided textbooks and readings which systematically push leftist ideas and denigrate or ignore conservative ideas. Leftist domination of almost all official campus newspapers, which are funded by taxpayers, compulsory student fees, or unwitting donors to the colleges and universities.Large numbers of leftist student organizations, supported by major, national leftist organizations.Leftist monopolies of most journalism faculties.Programs which present overwhelmingly leftist off-campus speakers to the students.Overwhelmingly leftist speakers provided to speak to graduates and their families at graduation ceremonies. College and university libraries packed with leftist books and magazines but few if any books or publications which promote conservative principles.Compulsory freshman orientation programs and "sensitivity training" designed by leftists to undermine traditional values.Mandatory seminars for students on how to have "safe sex" with little or no mention of the possibility or merits of abstinence or marriage.Enforced diversity in every area except for the adherence to or the teaching of conservative principles.Systematic Exclusion of ConservativesStudent admission procedures which deliberately weed out applicants who appear to be conservative.Known conservatives excluded from positions as dormitory Resident Assistants (who get free rooms) and all RAs subjected to training programs biased against traditional values.Graduate school practices which make it difficult or impossible for conservative graduate students to get advanced degrees which would lead to college teaching positions.Faculty hiring procedures which make it difficult or impossible for conservatives who manage to get advanced degrees to get teaching positions. Denial of salary increases to conservative faculty.Exclusion of conservative faculty from teaching courses that are requirements for graduation.Denial of tenure to faculty members because they are discovered to be conservatives.Tenure rules which give lifetime salaries to even the most incompetent leftist professors.Persecution of Conservative Students and OrganizationsFaculty who discourage or prohibit the expression of conservative thought by students in class.Faculty who urge students in their classes to vote for specific leftist candidates.Exams that assume a leftist agenda to be correct.Faculty who penalize in their grades students who reveal themselves to be conservative, which sometimes delays or even prevents those students' graduation.Speech codes and campus rules which facilitate leftist indoctrination and clamp down on any expression of conservative opinions. Faculty who shout down speakers and even organize walkouts if conservatives speak at public programs on campus.Refusal or long delays in granting conservative student groups recognition as official campus groups, despite the presence of many officially recognized leftist student groups.Official student organization allotting student activity fee money overwhelmingly to leftist student groups.Refusal of administration to allow student groups to present conservative speakers on campus, on the basis of assumed security risk.Discrimination against conservative student groups which ask to reserve rooms or other campus facilities for meetings and public programs -- denying them rooms, unreasonably delaying the assignment of rooms, changing the room at the last moment, or giving them the worst locations. Destruction or theft of any conservative publications on campus.Vandalization of campus offices of conservative student groups.Proliferation of leftist signs, posters, and flyers posted on bulletin boards all over campus but the immediate defacement or tearing down of comparable conservative materials.Toleration of leftist slogans and advertising posted on dorm room doors but restriction and destruction of comparable conservative communications.Persecution of students and student organizations who are motivated by religious faith.Ridicule of students who appear on campus in their military uniforms.Political Correctness Gone MadProhibitions of U.S. military recruiters on campus.Prohibitions of ROTC programs on campus.Violation of freedom of association through persecution or prohibition of fraternities and sororities.Elimination of single-sex bathrooms in dormitories or establishment of special bathrooms for the "transgendered."College rules which authorize overnight guests in dorm rooms with people of either sex -- rules which force offended roommates either to witness these sexual couplings or to find somewhere else to spend the night. -Morton C. Blackwell