Recently, I’ve been talking to current students at the university where I earned my Bachelor and Master of Science degrees who are members of organizations in which I was very active including holding leadership positions.  I’m referring to the College Republicans (very active member), Jewish Student Association (president and two-term treasurer), and Israel Club (webmaster).

First, the College Republicans when I was involved had balls:

We held a week of events for Concealed Carry on Campus Week despite university objection.  Economist John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws and Freedomnomics spoke at one event.  The Virginia Citizens Defense League was actively involved with speeches by its president, Philip Van Cleave, and other members as well as basic firearms safety training followed by a free day at the range for students sponsored by VCDL members.  I personally took the training, but unfortunately had an exam at the exact time everyone else went to the range.

When the Objectivist Club lost recognition by the university, the CRs stepped in to prevent the cancellation of a speech by the sadly now departed John Lewis of Ashland University on Islamic Totalitarianism.  The SDS and other groups protested and disrupted the event, as you would expect, of course.  Another event the CRs co-hosted featured a Lebanese Christian woman speaking in graphic detail on the topic of the brutal mistreatment of women in the Muslim world.

We held Conservative Pride Week events to counter the other “pride” week.  The school blocked us from putting small stakes with pictures of conservative heroes around campus to compete with the ones placed by the university-funded “pride” group, but we still held other events.

None of these events I’m told would occur today.

While we formally debated the College Democrats on stage in various public forums and fought them in dodgeball, I’m told the current leadership wanted to have a hot tub party with them.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen because who knows what sort of diseases our members could have contracted from them that hot chlorinated water wouldn’t kill.

Further, the Jewish Student Association and the Israel Club had balls as well:

When the MSA held an event by the clock tower shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, our members infiltrated it.  The MSA members draped a PA (obviously I don’t mean Pennsylvania if you catch my drift) flag on the clock tower as part of the event and had a moment of silence for the “martyrs.”  Yes, they tried to explain this away in the school newspaper, but this only came to light because our members were there and reported it.

When a spokeswoman for the PA spoke on campus, our members protested.  Our members were flipped off and berated with anti-Semitic slurs including “go back to Auschwitz.”

One president of the Israel Club was also an active member of the CRs and Students for Life, co-hosting several events with both groups.  But, he really showed he had balls by infiltrating the SJP organization.  He went to their meetings and no one ever suspected that he was president of the Israel Club attending the meetings of the primary opposition group!

We had members on all the rival groups’ e-mail lists, but we always found out when they attempted to do the same to us.  One of the primary drivers behind the move to further separate the Jewish Student Association and Hillel was the Hillel director’s refusal to remove some suspected infiltrators from the Hillel e-mail list.

Now, everything’s just social and there’s basically no separation from the student-run Jewish Student Association and Hillel, part of the Campus Ministry department.