The Ides of March: A Story of Death and Rebirth
When conceiving the idea for our publication, we wanted to make sure our goals and our reasons for being were very clearly stated from the outset. As such, we felt that it would be wise to fully explain how we were created and what events led up to that decision.
When I took over The Wabash Commentary in January of 2006, it needed a lot of work. The staff was reduced to only a handful of good guys, most of whom were graduating that spring. The office was a mess, with little or no organization, one computer and an old laser printer. We got to work soon after the start of the spring term, recruiting fresh faces and rebuilding what we had inherited. The spring semester was productive and foundational for the group.
Early on I recognized that there were many conservative students who were interested in working with a new TWC, but that remained relatively uninterested in writing for the magazine. I altered the organizational structure to accommodate this reality by creating an events track for interested students. At that point, Josh Bellis ’08 was serving as Events Coordinator and set about to create a professional events program. That spring, we hosted a religion and government panel to discuss the proper role of religion in the public sphere. Later in the semester, we hosted Michelle Easton, President of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute for a lecture entitled, “The Failure of Feminism”.
At the same time, we were working hard to reestablish ourselves on campus. After only publishing once the previous semester, we had a lot of work to do to prove we could be an effective voice for conservative students on campus. At that time, the interviews for the new president and dean of the College were underway. As each candidate interviewed on campus, he hosted a question and answer period with the student body. We promptly researched each candidate and wrote reflections on their student session and our general feeling about the fit of that particular candidate on the website. We then conducted interviews with both the new president and dean, which became the feature pieces for our January and May issues. Our March/April issue proved to be our most controversial as we delved inside the Malcolm X Institute and asked some probing questions regarding its function on campus.
During the summer, the staff continued to work hard, sending copies of These Fleeting Years, a compilation of anecdotal histories about Wabash, out to the incoming class of freshmen. Our work continued in the fall semester, as we had outgrown our old office space and moved into a bigger property to accommodate our growing staff and new furniture and computers. The fall semester saw an expansion of the size and scale of our events program as well. We kicked off the school year with a pro-life week, which we had spent most of the summer planning. Early Monday morning, staff members congregated on the college mall to put up 1,200 white crosses on the mall to represent the number of children that were to be aborted during the time most students were asleep. When students woke up Monday morning, the display was a powerful visual representation of an issue that too often is talked about abstractly. During the course of the week, we hosted two speakers, a psychologist who treats men who have had children aborted and the Vice-President of Feminists for Life of America, a group that believes that feminism should promulgate a pro-life message. Also during the fall semester, we managed to produce a full three issues, just as we had the previous spring.
Throughout this whole time, I had been engaged in an ongoing and increasingly unproductive discussion about the best way to be a force for conservatism on campus with a handful of previous TWC editors. Despite all the support we were receiving on campus from students administrators, and even many faculty, we were told we weren’t moving in the right direction. Indeed, if liberal faculty read our publication and engaged conservative students about their ideas, we could be sure we were doing something wrong. Despite all the letters from alumni who appreciated the way we had gravitated away from some of the less desirable elements of the publication’s past, these previous editors still maintained that we didn’t have a coherent vision. And despite the fact that we saw our methods as the appropriate way to engage a campus whose atmosphere had greatly changed from the early 90s, we were consistently told that we were not being effective. It seemed the more productive we were and the more we formed our own identity for the publication outside of the way it had normally operated, the more we were at odds with some former editors.
All of that baggage – both the accomplishments and the disheartening conversations – were carried into the meeting we had with the Foundation for a Traditional Wabash after the Ashcroft event. It was there that it became profoundly clear to me that our disagreements ran much deeper that I had thought. All the things that our staff had been proud of over the last year – heightened productivity, an increased staff, institutional support, interaction with liberal professors – were seen as emblematic of our failure. It was at this point that I realized they did have a point about direction. If seeing those things as negative is what TWC is supposed to be about, then I will gladly agree that it drifted away from its purpose under my editorship. If TWC has to be about needless invective, then I readily admit to being a willing saboteur during the last year and a half.
Although the meeting was called under the pretext of getting my input on who I wanted to select as the next editor of TWC, it quickly became clear that the meeting was about announcing the next editor with or without my support. A plan was already in place before I stepped in the office. Royce Gregerson ’09 would become editor by the beginning of the school year, with Josh Harris ’08 taking over during the fall semester while Mr. Gregerson was abroad. In fact, I was told, these two students had been active participants in these conversations and were ready and eager to “restore” the publication. Upon reflection, I suppose the covert involvement of two students was the most disheartening aspect of the whole affair, especially because I had considered at least one a good friend. Life lessons, I suppose.
After the meeting, my first inclination was to walk away in disgust. However, after talking to some good friends and other staffers, it became clear that we had to continue the work we started last year. If we truly felt we were headed in the right direction, if we truly felt that we had something to say about how conservatism should be presented on campus, then we have an obligation to continue. The Wabash Conservative Union is a reaffirmation that the best way to be an advocate for conservative ideas is to attack ideas and not people.
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