Campus Reform: Stanford University

Not every campus reformer will make their mark by hoisting up bold protest signs and chanting loudly in the streets. Some of the most daring and influential political statements in history were written in relatively small print, and student leaders can be part of that tradition by putting pen to paper for their conservative causes.

Whether it's writing on the CampusReform.org blog page for your college or university, the official newspaper on your campus, or an independent conservative student publication, you can help build a movement at your school upon the foundation of your ideas. (Just a couple good examples this week can be found here and here. Check out what they're doing, find your campus sub-site today, and get cracking.)

And another exceptional student who's really taking a stand with his writing is Dakin Sloss, President of the Objectivists of Stanford and the co-writer of the Stanford Review article The Man-Made Myth, which we've reported on previously.

In the interview linked here and displayed at the bottom of this article, he speaks about institutional bias, leftist intolerance of intellectual discourse, and the Teaching Assistant who authored a final exam that required students to try to debunk his arguments against anthropogenic climate change.

He takes all that in stride, saying that the only part of the whole controversy he really regrets is that his sincere offer of a fresh opinion was dismissed by many students and campus authorities with suppression and offensive comments, instead of spirited debate.

Nonetheless, Dakin remains optimistic. "I think that if you take the time and energy to come up with an intelligent argument, and you write about it, intelligent individuals will listen to you," he tells me.

"I'm not going to change every single student's perspective right now. I'm just going to give them some ideas to think about...maybe they won't change their mind, but a little doubt will be there." - Dakin Sloss

Here are a few ways you can follow Dakin's example and use your interest in writing to chip away at the intellectual imbalances on your campus:

"The Man-Made Myth" may have never been printed in the first place if the conservative Stanford Review was not already established on campus. Is your school's student paper a leftist rag that won't publish anything from your perspective?

Start an independent conservative or libertarian publication on your campus. We offer free Student Publication Workshops to train your staff in effective campus journalism, and we can even help you with seed money through our Balance in Media grant.

Write local, too. There are plenty of places to read and comment about the national news, but looking in-depth at events at your college or university is a niche you know best.

Most student publications simply regurgitate the on-goings of campus life without investigating claims, questioning policy, engaging in controversy, or expanding the discussion of important topics with multiple points of view. You never know what you might uncover or the opportunities that may come by being the first to break a story in an original way.

Use the power of social networking to promote your work. Instead of planting crops on a Facebook farm simulator that shall go unnamed, how about planting the seeds for your future as a voice for the conservative cause?

Take this as advice from a professional Facebook stalker: if you invested even a fraction of the time you dedicate to status updates and tweets about trivial things into writing and distributing quality material, you would receive a substantial return of interest from friends and even friends of friends.