the BETA DELTA alumni of THETA XI fraternity

Joe Holleman - BD 875

A recent poll regarding the question of whether the Beta Delta Chapter of Theta Xi Fraternity should be recolonized yielded a 77% favorability to do so.  However, amongst the 20% who voted against recolonizing (3% had no opinion), there was revealed an underlining sentiment that the Chapter's alumni ought to avoid investing financially, temporally, and yes, emotionally largely due to the inimical obstacle of a predominately liberal student population and administration hostile to the Greek system.  While more research is surely needed to determine the validity of this perception, the position of the naysayers along with current demographic statistics for college enrollment nevertheless would suggest that the end is nigh for the American conservative on not only SIUC's campus, but on universities across much of the nation.  Other comments from the polling further indicate that many are not only assured in this fate, but widely embrace it as an overall good.  They argue that as conservatives increasingly retreat from the four-year university, they do so in favor of vocational schools and entrepreneurial possibilities, two options that have certainly proven their worth as more prudent endeavors for economic independency.  Of course, while the economic benefits of this dynamic merit a high degree of praise and longevity, it must not be ignored that the four-year university remains and shall continue to remain a formidable gateway to the political domain of the American public system.  For especially young conservatives to bereave themselves en masse from this space is risking a self-imposed ostracism from one of the country's foremost and enduring producers of its political leaders.  

The AEI article, 'Why Republicans Should Not Run Away from Higher Education' well articulates this political pitfall.  Lost in the melee of today's political and cultural fervor is the fact that, irrespective of the declining number of university-bound conservatives (including students, professors, and administrators), the college graduate continues to make up the significant majority of elected and bureaucratic political office holders.  Additionally, according to the article, 55% of college graduates vote while only 29% of non-college graduates do, and according to another AEI article, 'Are Colleges and Universities Too Liberal?,' a little over 25% of college students categorize themselves as conservatives while over 50% say they're liberals.  While a variety political bodies shall naturally absorb large swaths of these young conservatives who forgo the American university, it's possible that doing so comes at the expense of a formal social apparatus that would otherwise foster and hone conservative political philosophies and aspirations.  Yes, vocational and entrepreneurial domains will inevitably develop their own political machinations, but it may very well do so without the benefit of sophisticated and experienced mentors and programs (not everyone is fitted with a natural sense of engaging improv or charming gravitas as Trump or Obama, respectively).  Conservatives absent from the university where their philosophical and political foundations would otherwise be developed through the guided blending of the liberal arts and sciences risk political aimlessness.  Though they may possess an innate sense of their politics, it is likely to remain raw and lacking of the theoretical and practical wherewithal to articulate it into effective action.  And though platforms such as YouTube, Rumble, and Twitter have thrived as modern printing presses, disseminating cascading volumes of information to the masses including ideas and philosophies in which conservatism is rooted, it is no substitute for the practical, human-to-human dynamics gained in the settings of the brick-and-mortar college.  It is hard to imagine a young Alexander in discernment of Aristotle's teachings from a series of YouTube videos in which the only interaction between protégé and mentor are the "like" and "subscribe" features and pause button.

Worse yet for conservatives is that with their expanding absenteeism from the university, their political rivals of the liberal Left will continue to ossify their grip around political and cultural vehicles, even further monopolizing the social institutions of our nation.  Say what you will about the political Left, but there is no denying their astounding capability to organize a political machine.

Despite what some may think, the American university will never disappear.  It may evolve and assume new modi operandi and its lofty status in the culture may recede, but it is historically foolhardy to dismiss it as a dying enterprise.  And while the trend of the past few years demonstrates not only a sharp decline in college enrollment (especially amongst men) but also an acceptance of business owners to higher non-college graduates, we ought to take caution of what exactly this trend implies, especially given its extremely small sample size of less than a half decade worth of data.  Moreover, we ought to recognize that despite the business world being more accepting of the foregoing of college, the political domain is not.  National AND state and local office seekers remain by and large college graduates (in 2020, approximately 75% of state legislators possessed at least an undergraduate degree).  

Higher education institutions are a truism of any public system (even the Taliban have their madrassas).  As shown throughout history, every nation endeavors to ensure a form of educational institutionalism, especially in the service of educating government leaders.  As far back as Ancient Egypt, universities in one form or another have been emplaced to fortify the intellectual capacities of a society's elites, much of it including the political classes.  Though on the surface, it is not unwise for conservatives to dominate the vocational trades and entrepreneurial endeavors, doing so at the expense of the four-year university surrenders this particular arena of political cultivation to their ideological competitors.  Despite the rise of conservative populism since the 2012 emergence of the Tea Party and the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in which the utility and allure of the college degree has waned amongst Republicans and conservatives, the educational makeup of the current 118th U.S. Congress suggests that the political elite are in no hurry to eschew the college pathway to power.  64% of the House of Representatives hold a master's degree while only 5% have no degree, and 78 U.S. senators hold at least one master's degree.  Do conservatives truly want to gamble away the university's penchant for king making?  The professional political class would suggest against it.  Perhaps their would-be successors (as well as their mentors) ought to take note.

Conservatives are wise to continue their flooding of the vocations and non-college-degree entrepreneur domains.  However, to widely disregard college in the process, even if only to do so with the elite schools ("elite" functioning as a synonym for "ultra liberal" these days), is akin to plunging one's head into the sand.  Once conservatives finally see the political forest through the entrepreneurial trees, they shall soon realize that though they run the businesses, the elected officials and their bureaucratic lackeys who control the political, legal, and even cultural frameworks that constrain those businesses are none other than their liberal and leftist counterparts, fully equipped with a variety of undergraduate and post-graduate certifications (would any Chicago-based business owner care to laud Ms. Kimberly Fox right now?).

This situation ought to trouble the Beta Delta Alumni out of their prolonged hibernation and perhaps ask whether there may be a role in resurrecting our lost Chapter so to address this very issue at our Alma Mater.  It's not so much that conservatives are leaving the university in and of itself that's the most concerning.  Rather, it's that college - a true mainstay of our public system - is now so fully dominated by one end of our typically stable political binary.  No major cultural institution should be held in monopoly by one political body, yet that is exactly what's occurring at the American university.  Conservatives must not be flippant here (look to the troubling issues of today's school boards to see what flippancy brings).  If they cede the political functions within college campuses to liberals and leftists, they likely do so with the political offices to which these would-be graduates aspire.

And while there is validity to the argument that the conservative movement out of the university and into immediate vocational and entrepreneurial endeavors is an expression of the rugged individualism of the traditional American man - the same that tamed the Wild West - there is no reason that such male independency cannot encapsulate both this type of individualism while also pursuing a pathway of higher education.  Would anyone, for example, question the ruggedness or individualism of say Theodore Roosevelt?  Our 26th President not only graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1880, but spent years as a peace officer and rancher in the American Badlands - the very personification of the romantic rugged individual.

Of course, it's fair to say that the framework of the American university is not what it was in Roosevelt's era.  Bloated tuition costs, department administrations that often outnumber the students, the regression of academic excellence for social activism, and a slew of other factors have undoubtedly eroded the prestige of this once great bulwark of higher learning.  Nevertheless, should this not be a call to action rather than retreat?  Again, as the university perseveres in its function to mold the intellectualism of our future political and cultural leaders, why would conservatives not want to seize such a bastion back while also expanding into others?

I'm a staunch conservative.  Yet, I'm not ignorant to the fact that if given too much power for too long, any political movement shall find itself staring into the abyss of nihilism and eventually eat itself (exactly what is happening with much of the current American Left now).  A counterbalance - or rather a balance of power as foreign policy practitioners would call it - is a natural requirement for all human endeavors lest we face madness.  The university must not remain dominated by a single political energy, especially if that energy is to be channeled into national political leadership.  Conservatives must therefore not retreat from this domain of higher education.  

I am not suggesting that they wrest back influence over the university system just for the sake of defaulting to former education models emplaced before the current enrollment decline.  The world is different than it was before liberals and leftists began their long march through the institutions to dominate American colleges.  It's more globally connected and consequential.  Domestic politics are in the forefront of the national discourse as much as they were during the 1960s and 70s.  Communication and information technology has advanced in ways that we are barely able to reconcile.  Accordingly, any system of higher education must adapt to these changing tides (as Marcus Aurelius noted, "Change is nature's delight").  Conservatives must see this not as an obstruction or something to fear, but as an opportunity to implement their own vision of public life.  If, for instance, they still maintain the aspiration of a private educational system finally overtaking its public sector counterpart, then they ought to lean into it with fierceness and ferocity (as they are with Hillsdale College in Michigan or Liberty University in Virginia).  

In the end, if for no other sake than political balance, conservatives must not allow themselves to turn their backs on one of the more prominent centers of political development. In fact, that's why they're in this mess in the first place - a political apathy in the university since the mid-20th century and now a temptation to simply cede ground altogether.