Forget Gender Equality NOW. Forget Students Against Rape Culture. As a matter of fact, forget The Guilfordian. What this campus needs is groups that focus on strengthening national security, promoting traditional marriage, preventing illegal immigration, and banning abortion.At least that’s what the Leadership Institute thinks.

Based in Washington, D.C., the Leadership Institute is a non-profit, “non-partisan” educational organization that seeks to identify, recruit, train, and place conservatives to fight, of their own volition, on college campuses across the nation.

The Leadership Institute places field representatives in different regions of the country to help students establish their own conservative organizations and conservative student newspapers on campus.

I understand how newspapers may have liberal or conservative slants in their coverage. But if a paper is going to solely cover issues pertinent to their political agenda (whether it be liberal or conservative), then this paper will inherently neglect to cover issues that are not ideologically relevant to their cause.

Now, to be fair, I am not against students organizing to address conservative issues on campus.

But, to have an outside group that aims to promote an exclusive, oppressive political ideology throughout the nation be the root from which these groups stem, perpetuates a system that works to further divide our already divided nation (and campus).

It’s no secret. Not here or anywhere else. For the most part, people with similar interests and political views tend to bond together. Thus, we’re all sick of hearing about the student/athlete and conservative/liberal student divide at Guilford.

If we want to strengthen this divide, and get so sick of hearing about the divide that people begin to wish they were deaf, then let’s greet the fine, “non-partisan” folks from the Leadership Institute with open arms.

If we don’t want to see another 100 articles written in this forum section about the divide, then let us conservative and liberal students all come together and tell the Leadership Institute to take a hike.
The path leading up to Founders Hall that literally splits the campus in half and boasts of our core values, also figuratively splits it in half. To the left and slightly up the hill is the Greenleaf Coffee Co-operative. To the far right across the road is the Armfield Athletic Center. Any questions?

Please, let’s not form an official conservative student organization and turn this walkway into a wall.

To be fair, if the Leadership Institute wanted to emphasize liberalism on Guilford’s campus and have a super leftist campus newspaper, I would be equally opposed to it.

While I would be more likely to join designated liberal organizations, the divide on this campus would still be perpetuated, and those who are sick and tired of Guilford’s inherent divide would become even more frustrated.

The Leadership Institute’s principles and practices that aim to recruit students to help them fight towards the next conservative revolution sound too similar to those of the United States Army.

And the day that the Leadership Institute and the United States Army set up adjacent tables outside the cafeteria is the day the Founder’s walkway turns into a wall.