Lauren Cooley - an alternative to liberal indoctrination on campus
Colleges and Universities today are overwhelmingly liberal. They indoctrinate their students and punish conservative thought. They have been like this for many years and we all know it. The old saying that “everyone is a liberal until they start working and paying taxes” is partly because of this academic conditioning, and refusing to be suppressed by it takes courage and determination.
Our speaker at the Boca and Wellington chapter meetings this month, Lauren Cooley, refused to drink the Kool Aid. Now 22, she became an activist while attending Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. As a campus leader of Furman’s Conservative Students for a Better Tomorrow (CSBT), she became nationally known for pointing out the hypocrisy of a school that would deny student credit for a lecture by Anne Coulter (which she organized), but provide it for race baiter and shake-down artist Jesse Jackson (who was lauded as a “historical figure”). At the Jackson event, she distributed a pamphlet listing many of Jackson’s actual quotes that led to a battle with the administration. Attacked by the student paper and her professors, she involved the media in a project to illustrate the curious “qualifications” of those speakers for which credit was granted and for those where it was not, and filed a Title 9 complaint alleging harassment.
Now working as a Florida field coordinator for Chicago based Turning Point USA, she maintains a presence on campus at many South Florida schools, engaging the students to consider conservative points of view. Beginning the conversation with “Big Government Sucks”, or talking about “generational theft”, she presents an alternative to the insidious bias experienced in the classrooms. The organization also distributes a pamphlet to recent high school graduates that gives them a “heads up” as to the political conditioning they can expect when they arrive on campus.
If you would like to learn more about Lauren and her work, you can visit the Turning Point USA website. A 501(c)(3), donations are tax deductible. She also asks that if you know of young people of a conservative bent that would be willing to participate in her campus outreach, to hook them up. Lauren is on twitter @laurenacooley and facebook and can be reached by email at lauren@turningpointusa.net.
The meeting was held in a new location – the conference room at the recently completed Bethesda Hospital West. Besides use of the room, the hospital graciously provided light refreshments, and a health oriented “goodie bag” for all participants, and their hospitality was well received.