Rescue Mission

Jeffrey Hubbard was sent to Seattle to scope out the city’s college
campuses. His goal: To start as many conservative student organizations
as he can. “You can view my job

as a rescue mission, to help conservative students level the playing
field,” he says.

Hubbard is a field representative for the Leadership Institute, an
Arlington, Virginia–based organization that claims to have
enrolled more than 67,000 students in its seminars and workshops since
it was founded in 1979. The Leadership Institute’s founder, Morton
Blackwell, is a well-known conservative activist and member of the
executive committee of the Republican National Committee, as well as a
founding member of the secretive Council for National Policy—a
think tank founded by Left Behind author and evangelical
Christian minister Tim LaHaye.

Each year, through its Campus Leadership Program, the Leadership
Institute sends 50 field representatives across the country to
encourage conservative students to set up student groups and newspapers
that “challenge liberal ideologies,” according to Hubbard, who sees his
task as monumental. The students Hubbard hopes to attract are those who
feel their beliefs in free-market capitalism and traditional values
make them a minority in bleeding-heart Seattle.

“Those of the leftist persuasion have had a stranglehold on the
college campuses in the greater Seattle area for such a long time that
it will be difficult to bring conservatives out,” he says. He plans to
accomplish that task by manning an information booth at university
functions and contacting students via Facebook. For his 11-week stint
in Seattle, he will be paid about $15,000. In 2006, the Leadership
Institute reported revenues of just over $16 million.

Conservative campus groups welcome the Leadership Institute’s
efforts. “Hopefully they’ll bring some conservatives out of the
woodwork,” says Auggie Eck, president of the UW
College
Republicans.

One of the Leadership Institute’s accomplishments is a small
conservative paper at SU called the Statesman, which depends
heavily on the institute for its printing and distribution costs.

“Funding would have been a serious issue” in maintaining the
Statesman if the Leadership Institute hadn’t stepped in, says SU
senior Chris Jay, who edits the paper. Jay plans to meet soon with
Hubbard, who wants to make sure the paper hasn’t changed direction
since the Leadership Institute approved its $750 stipend.

Actually, the Statesman has hardly published anything at
all—except for a web-only edition that consists entirely of
commentary. And it hasn’t exactly found an audience at SU. Ever since
the publication stirred up controversy last year with its original
moniker, the Chieftain, the paper hasn’t made much headway on
the SU campus. (Another paper that the Leadership Institute
supports—UW’s Right Turn [“Writing to the Right,” Mahrya
Draheim, Oct 16, 2003]—seems to have vanished completely.) But
with the Leadership Institute’s stipend, the Statesman‘s small
staff doesn’t have to worry about readership and advertising
revenue.

Other school papers aren’t so lucky. Across the country, student
newspapers are scaling back and cutting pages in response to falling ad
revenues. Earlier this year, Syracuse University’s Daily Orange and Berkeley’s Daily Californian cut their publication schedules
to four days a week, eliminating the Friday paper edition. Joshua
Lynch, editor-in-chief of SU’s official student newspaper, the
Spectator, says, “It would be really rough to see the
Spectator go under and see something like the Statesman go on.”

Lynch, who regards himself as a conservative, disagrees with
Hubbard’s characterization of SU as a school that ostracizes
conservatives. “I don’t think conservatives are at all singled out. If
anything, they hide themselves,” he says.

Sarah Jeglum, a former editor-in-chief of the Daily, UW’s
student newspaper, says she doesn’t see the need for someone like
Hubbard on campus.

“Conservatives don’t need to be sent out here from across the
country; people here are capable of speaking up for themselves,” Jeglum
says. “If students want to speak up, there are ways for them to be
heard.”

The Leadership Institute, which says it supports more than 1,000
student organizations across the country, hopes to boost the number of
active college conservatives who support “free enterprise, limited
government, and traditional values.” The institute’s website boasts of
recent anti–gay marriage protests by field representatives and
features video footage of institute-trained students protesting the
Washington, D.C., handgun ban.

As the school year begins, Hubbard and his fellow field
representatives will be walking around campuses around the country,
where they’ll do their best to rally Republicans and bring as many
college conservatives as they can out of hiding.