How to Stay Conservative in College – The American Spectator

It’s every conservative parent’s worst fear: you send your child off to college, and, instead of growing intellectually, he or she joins in the debauchery that has overtaken college campuses.

It’s already a fear I have for my own children, one made especially salient by the birth of my first child last summer.

I attended a public college in the late 2010s, when conservatives were considered outcasts but weren’t quite the pariahs they’re treated as today. Since that time, the situation has only gotten worse. I currently direct student programming for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization that promotes conservative thought on college campuses, so I have witnessed all the ways that social pressures can alienate conservative students but also tempt them to make the trek over to the other side. (READ MORE: The Biden Administration’s Title IX Revisions Provoke Backlash From Left and Right)

I believe that the possession and cultivation of a steadfast moral character provides the best guard against the excesses of the college campus. Here I supply some practical tips to help students flourish during their time in college.

Put Your Faith First

Do not abandon your faith in college. It will keep you tethered to the truth, staving off the nihilism that can infect college students. If you’re Catholic, go to Mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation, and, if you attend a secular university, join your campus’s Newman Center. If you’re Protestant, find a church and join a group like InterVarsity or Campus Crusade.

Pray for your peers and professors who disparage or belittle Christians. Don’t participate in the excess and vulgarity that has disordered relationships between men and women, such as hookup culture. Find a friend group through your church or a conservative organization on campus that will support you and help your faith flourish while also keeping you from feeling alienated. Nurture your faith so that you may also avoid becoming an ideologue.

In the words of the late bishop Fulton J. Sheen, “If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.”

One key warning: many religious groups on campus, like many religious colleges, have gone woke or succumbed to the religious Left. Be careful and discerning. Not all Bible studies are necessarily good for you.

Visit and Speak to Your Parents Regularly

College comes with newfound freedom, which is exciting, but this also creates opportunities for young adults to drift away from their family’s values. It’s easy for young people to forget where they came from while in college, especially if they’re far from home.

We conservatives believe that tradition is a good thing — it’s a playbook from our elders that helps us navigate life and its vicissitudes without needing to resort entirely to trial and error. Make it a habit to text or call your parents multiple times per week, and don’t dismiss their advice. The independence you have as a college student shouldn’t create distance between you and your parents.

Parents, college also shouldn’t mean that it’s time to have a “friendly” relationship with your child — your child still needs a parent. The vocation of parenthood doesn’t end once your child legally becomes an adult. If anything, strong parenting is essential during the college years, especially if you want to help your child remain devout in his or her faith and convictions.

Don’t Do Drugs

You should just say no to any kind of recreational drug, including marijuana. Drugs are simply a canoe ride upstream from leftists and liberals. Alcohol, consumed in moderation and legally, can be a helpful social lubricant, and even Roger Scruton himself was passionate about wine, having written an entire book on the subject. But stay away from drugs.

Get a Real Job

Find a part-time job that challenges you to grow in the virtues of patience, gratitude, and humility and allows you to work alongside people who come from disparate backgrounds. This excludes a lot of on-campus jobs, like being a research assistant or secretary. The idea is to interact with people beyond the curated confines of the university, where you already share things like age and educational background with the majority of your peers.

Through my summer jobs in college, I grew close to coworkers with different life situations, including a single mom without a college education and a security guard who was taking night classes at a community college. My jobs exposed me to a real-world snapshot of the community of which a college campus isn’t representative. My coworkers were concerned with picking their children up from day care and school, taking disabled parents to doctors’ appointments, and leaving work on time so that they could make it to their second job across town. I learned that life is messy, unfair, and unsafe, with no organically created safe spaces out in the wild. I also appreciated the dignity of hard work and commensurate pay.

Join a Conservative Group

Much like joining a religious group or church, there is much to be gained in joining a conservative organization. A few that stand out are my own employer, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; Turning Point USA; Young America’s Foundation, or YAF; the Leadership Institute; Young Women for America; the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women; and, of course, College Republicans.

This Is a Demanding Endeavor

Although this list is a good start for holding yourself accountable in college, I want to emphasize that staying conservative in college is not easy. Temptation isn’t always obvious. It’s not always a Democratic Socialists of America ambassador earnestly trying to catechize you into the socialist cause. In fact, this is rarely the case.

There will be constant pressure from your professors and peers, advertising and big business, social media and the government, to reject first principles in favor of the progressive politics du jour. The acceptance of social pathologies that are central to the Left’s agenda, such as abortion and transgenderism, will be framed as compassionate, even good.

You will be tempted to deny what is true and right in favor of comfort and acceptance. But diamonds are made under great pressure.

Stay true to the pursuit of virtue in every aspect of your life on campus, and you can stay true to remaining conservative.

Marlo Slayback is national director of student programs at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

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