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“Government is a place where

people can come together. It’s a

place where we are able to address our

common issues and find pragmatic

solutions.”

Jimmy LangSenior

Parties discuss political ideologies

Mayank Dhungana/IndexSenior Courtney Robbins, freshmen Elizabeth Brewster and Payton Whetstone and sophomore Sean Cooksey pass out T-shirts at the College Republican meeting Tuesday night.

BY ZOE MARTINAssistant Features Editor

In a little more than a month, voters will decide who gets to hang out in the White House for the next four years. One thousand miles away from D.C., in the serene farm-land of Adair County, a few groups of students are motivated to affect those results.

The University’s chapters of College Republicans, Libertarians and Democrats face divisive issues, unprecedented enthusiasm from fel-low young voters and tight races in political campaigns from the top of the ticket to local elections. The leaders of these groups are eager and willing to accept the challenge.

Senior Casey Sharp, chairwoman of College Republicans, said she grew up with Democratic parents but that the Republican Party’s hands-off fi scal policies attracted her.

“Being Republican, to me at the heart of it, is small government,” Sharp said. “It’s about peeling away the bureaucratic red-tape and trusting in our citizens the respon-sibility because we feel like we can take it.”

Sharp said College Republicans’ members spend a lot of time cam-paigning for candidates on national and local levels. However, she said the group is about sharing ideology as well as achieving political goals.

“The election ends in November, we all know that, but that doesn’t mean that the mission of College Republicans ends,” Sharp said. “We like to provide a home. We realize we’re the minority on cam-pus. That’s fi ne. And while we’re a group of people with diverse values in and of ourselves we have social conservatives, fi scal conservatives, we like to provide a place where we can discuss our ideas.”

Sharp said the group’s 40 or so members meet every Tuesday in Violette Hall with this purpose in mind. Another of their tasks is co-ordinating volunteers to canvass and post signs for state and local Republican candidates. As college students, Sharp said higher educa-tion issues, whether the candidates address them through tax credits or increased scholarships, motivate the members to help. She said the results of this election will create drastic changes regardless of which party takes offi ce.

“While Obama stresses that there’s change and it’s time for change, nobody wants what we have right now, and we do need to come out of the rubble that’s been created,” Sharp said. “So I think it’s

really interesting the change and the advances that both candidates are offering.”

Sophomore Josh Schisler, presi-dent of College Libertarians, said Libertarian candidates face a handi-cap in national elections.

“There’s a disadvantage in being a third party in the United States,” Schisler said. “The ballot access laws are completely slanted to per-petuate the power of the Democrat and Republican parties.”

Schisler said this struggle for recognition is also a party strength.

“I think that can give you some-what of an advantage because a lot of people are disenchanted with the current two choices,” he said.

Schisler described libertarianism as a combination of democrat and republican issues with a focus on minimal government involvement.

“We should be able to do what-ever we want so long as we’re not harming anybody else,” he said. “I guess that’s the tenet. It’s sort of a combination of each issue of the Democrats and Republicans. Demo-crats want to control your fi scal life and Republicans want to control your social life, but we don’t want to control either.”

Schisler said the major parties frequently ignore broader issues in favor of specifi c hot topics. He cited anti-war concerns as an example.

“The Democrats appeal to the anti-war group, saying that they’ll get out of Iraq, but they don’t talk about reducing our troops around the world,” Schisler said. “We have troops in over 100 countries around the world and nobody talks about bringing them home. Liber-tarians want to end the sort of global empire that we have as well as end the war in Iraq.”

He said Liber-tarianism also can appeal to Repub-licans in favor of laissez-faire eco-nomic policies.

“We support more economic freedom than John McCain or really anybody in the Republican Party does,” Schisler said. “John McCain, he supported the bail-out of Bear Stearns. The government shouldn’t be involved with that portion of life — if they have to be, it’s to the minimal extent. A lot of Republi-cans are telling other Republicans to ‘hold your nose and vote for John

McCain.’ They don’t have to. They can vote for someone who’s very fi scally conservative.”

Schisler said the Libertarian can-didate for president is Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman, who should be on the presidential ballot in 48 states in November.

Schisler said he came to be Libertar-ian via the Republi-can Party.

“I realized that I didn’t support a lot of the policies by arguing with people who didn’t believe the same thing as me and realizing that they were right, and ultimately realizing that neither party — no party other than the Libertarian Party — will further my ideologies,” he said.

Senior Jimmy Lang, president of

College Democrats, said his af-fi liation with the Democratic Party resulted more from his values than specifi c party issues.

“More than I was born into a po-litical party, I was born into a certain set of values where you look out for your neighbor,” Lang said. “I was born into the notion of community, and that’s what led me to democrat-

ic politics. … And I’m happy to be here — this is where the action is.”

Like Sharp, Lang included higher education alongside health care and the economy as this election’s big-gest issues.

“When it comes to education, specifically higher education, peo-ple do have loans, people do need help when it comes to federal as-sistance,” Lang said. “And I think people are understanding the health care crisis we’re going through and the fact that a lot of people are one illness away from debt. … I think what’s significant about our orga-nization is that we have a grasp of that reality while it may not be our own reality.”

Lang said the Democrats’ stance on these issues ultimately would win elections for the party.

“When we’re talking about health care, when we’re talking about education, Democrats win — hands down,” he said. “But when we get mixed up in the mud-slinging and the attacks and the non-issues, when we’re talking about personal-ity when we should be talking about policy, that’s where Republicans get their votes.”

Lang said about 60 active mem-bers of College Democrats attempt to keep the issues at the forefront in this year’s elections by volunteering for national and local campaigns.

“We have a lot of folks wanting

to do a lot of things, from Barack Obama all the way down the ticket to working for Rebecca McClana-han,” he said. “And very often we have people overlapping, saying, ‘I want to canvass for Barack, and I want to do phone calls for Rebecca,’ so the issue is utilizing our resources in the best way possible.”

Lang said that in this election, young voters across the political spectrum share this enthusiasm.

“A lot of people say, ‘Don’t bank on the youth vote,’” Lang said. “I don’t buy it. I’ve seen people ener-gized in ways I’ve never seen before. … We won’t know until election day how this pans out, but I think the doubters are in for a surprise.”

Lang attributes the motivation of young Democrats to Obama’s message.

“He’s not the youngest guy — I personally can’t relate to a guy that’s married and has two kids — what we relate to is the vision that’s put forth,” he said. “We are able to respond to anything that offers a message of hope and of change and a sense that we have a responsibil-ity.”

For Lang, the changes offered by this year’s election reflect a po-litical ideal.

“Government is a place where people can come together,” he said. “It’s a place where we are able to address our common issues and fi nd pragmatic solutions.”