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The Latest from SFL

Student Movement Update: Constitution Day

Next Friday, September 17th is Constitution Day, the 223rd anniversary of the signing of that historic document. The ratification of the constitution represented a monumental step for the cause of liberty. The people, through their representatives, placed explicit limits on the state and declared that government was beholden to the people, not the other way around.

Sadly, these lessons have been slowly forgotten. Now it is up to the youth to remind the country what the constitution means.

Our friends at Young Americans for Liberty are here to help you do just that. They are offering Constitution Day activism kits to student groups to help them defend the constitution on campus. The kit includes great resources and a list of past successful events such as a 2nd Amendment Nerf Gun Range and the Unconstitutional Gorilla (seriously).

Check out YAL’s Constitution Day page and the resources you can request here.

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E-Leadership: Radical Ideologies of the 20th Century

In the next E-Leadership webinar, Brad Birzer will discuss the turn of the intellectual landscape in the late 1800s and the consequential development and dark impact of collectivist ideology on the 20th century. Focusing on the tragic devastation caused in 1970s Cambodia by Pol Pot’s Khumer Rouge, Dr. Birzer will lead thought provoking insights on the role of ideas and the fate of classical liberalism in our times.

Listening to the lecture is completely free, and students from all over the world are invited to participate.  Speakers and listeners join the program from their computers and interact in a live question and answer session after the lecture.

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FIRE Constitution Day Celebration

Over the past few years, college students have embraced Constitution Day as an opportunity to remind fellow students about their rights on campus. Liberty-minded student groups host creative and attention-grabbing Constitution Day events to kick off the new school year. Here are a few suggestions from FIRE for how you can celebrate on September 17th:

  • Set up an open microphone or soapbox in a public place for people to use throughout the day. Have group members use it to read the Constitution and passages of “banned books” aloud. Sing “Happy Birthday” to the Constitution.
  • Stage a debate about an issue that you think doesn’t get enough attention on campus. Or stage one between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, using arguments from period writings like the Federalist Papers. (This is a great excuse to wear a costume!)
  • Build a temporary “free speech wall” out of cardboard or plywood covered in paper and provide markers for students to exercise their right to anonymous speech on campus.
  • Host a trivia event to find out what students really know about the Constitution and the First Amendment. Extra points for naming all five rights in the First Amendment!
  • Hand out pocket Constitutions, or candy with articles, sections, or amendments to the Constitution attached. Everybody likes free stuff, especially free food.

Have fun, be creative, and send in pictures and videos of your events to post on FIRE’s CFN Facebook page and the CFN website. CFN members can also earn points for the CFN Incentive Program, with prizes including a $2,500 scholarship and a prize pack with a new Apple laptop, Flip camera, iPod Touch, and a 42″ HDTV.

RSVP to the Facebook event and join in on the celebration!

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New Student Resource: LibertyCal

Students For Liberty is pleased to introduce our newest student resource: LibertyCal.

What is LibertyCal?

The LibertyCal is a compilation of pro-liberty events across the United States that are hosted by or relevant to students. Event types listed include:

Screen shot of LibertyCal

  • conferences
  • student group meetings
  • essay contests
  • application deadlines
  • movie screenings
  • speaker events
  • socials
  • book signings
  • important dates in the history of the liberty movement
  • and many more.

Why LibertyCal?

The purpose of the LibertyCal is to increase awareness of pro-liberty events regionally and to connect pro-liberty students with other students, non-profit organizations, and community members. Organizations that list their events in our calendar can expect increased attendance, and students no longer have to sort through hundreds of emails, Facebook events, and individual websites to find the event information they want. The LibertyCal is a hub, connecting interested students to the events that will benefit them the most.

How does it work?

The calendar is updated with new events from major non-profit organizations like The Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the American Enterprise Institute, and many of our other friends, as well as individual student groups, as soon as we discover them.

For ease, the calendar is separated into four colors: blue denotes events that are not location-specific, such as webinars, internship applications, essay contests, and some international events; green denotes events in the Eastern region of the United States; red denotes the Central region, and tan denotes the Western region. You can select to view all of the regions at once, or select only the ones relevant to you, while also shifting from monthly, weekly, and “agenda” layouts.

You can also sync the LibertyCal to you personal Google Calendar by clicking the “[+ Google Calendar]” button on the bottom right of the LibertyCal screen.

If you would like your event listed on the LibertyCal, click here to submit your event information. Any questions about individual events should be directed to the points of contact listed for that event. Questions or comments about the LibertyCal in general should be directed to the project’s manager, Brandon Wasicsko (bwasicsko@studentsforliberty.org).

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Students For Liberty Tabling Kits

Students For Liberty is pleased to announce the introduction of our official Tabling Kit for student groups. This kit provides student groups who are advancing the ideas of liberty with a variety of resources to attract students to their group. We realize that students are a diverse group, and something that attracts one type of person to liberty may not work on another type, which is why we provide an assortment of resources to use on campus. During the trial session dozens of groups across the country found great success with these kits.

These resources are provided to all liberty-advancing student groups in the United States free of charge but a small fee is required solely to cover the shipping of the kits. Included in the kit:

- 10 Pocket Constitutions from The Cato Institute
- 5 Students For Liberty Stickers
- 5 Students For Liberty Pins
- 5 Copies of Reason Magazine
- 5 Copies of “The Freeman” from FEE
- 2 Manuals about free-speech on campus from FIRE
- 2 Copies of Peter O’Rourke’s “Eat The Rich” from The Cato Institute
- 10 flyers advertising upcoming Students For Liberty events
- 5 policy papers from The Cato Institute
- 1 “Successful Tabling” handbook

If you would like a special order with resources from The Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, The Advocates for Self Government, and/or Reason Magazine please contact Students For Liberty’s Internal Operations Manager Peter Neiger at pneiger@studentsforliberty.org.

Click here to order your Tabling Kit!

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Liberty Minded Student Profile

The George Mason University Students For Liberty has just launched a new feature on its blog: Liberty Minded Student Profiles.  The purpose of these profiles is to highlight the work students are doing for liberty around the world and share their experiences with others.  I had the honor of being the first person they interviewed, and the questions ranged from how I first got interested in liberty to the story of SFL’s founding.  The profile is now upon their blog in case anyone is interested in reading it.  Here are a couple of questions that I want to make sure to highlight, though:

  • Are there any interesting stories related to its founding, or early years?
  • The first day of that first conference is something I will always remember.  All the members of the Exec Board arrived in New York City the night before to finish preparations for the conference, and we went to sleep on the floor/couches of our Columbia member’s common room looking for a good night’s sleep before the chaos of the conference began.  We were woken up at 6am, though, by one student from the South calling to ask: “Is the conference canceled?”  We looked out the window and realized that a blizzard had hit NYC while we were asleep and the city was a mess.  We had put too much effort into preparing that conference to just cancel it, though, so we immediately began to call every single attendee and nonprofit representative to let them know the conference was still going to be held and encourage them to come.  It was a very stressful and frantic start to the first day because we not only had the added work of contacting everyone to overcome that snowstorm, but we had to carry boxes, flyers, coffee, and all kinds of other materials through 2 feet of snow to set everything up.  Our side of the story is just background, though.  The incredible part is how students reacted to the snowstorm.  While we were most worried about students canceling, students were most worried about finding ways to attend the conference by any means possible.  Students from California had their flights to NYC canceled, so instead flew to DC, took a train to New Jersey, then a bus to NYC.  Students from Michigan drove 18 hours straight through the blizzard to make it on time.  Only a handful of students canceled, but almost everyone, both students and speakers, were able to make it on time out of sheer will and perseverance in the cause of liberty.  Seeing the dedication of those students overcome any obstacle in their way to take part in the first SFL Conference inspired us in a way that I can’t describe.  The perseverance of those students cleared away any doubt there may have been about turning the conference into an organization: these students were willing to take on a blizzard to be part of this event.  There needed to be more opportunities and more support for these amazing students than a onetime event.

  • Anything else you want readers to know? Any other specific achievements you are proud of?
  • During my sophomore year, I applied to and was rejected by the Institute for Humane Studies Koch Summer Fellowship Program.  During my junior year, I applied to and was rejected by the Cato Institute’s internship program.  I ended up being accepted to KSFP and being offered a job at Cato the year following each rejection.  Instead of taking these rejections (too) personally, I used them as motivation to better myself and figure out what I really wanted to do.  So if you get turned down for an internship somewhere you really wanted, you never know what might happen… maybe they’ll offer you a job the next year.

Special thanks to Danny Shiner for putting this together and taking the initiative to get such a valuable product (the profile series, not mine in particular) off the ground!  The full post is here.

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Michael Strong: A Conscious Capitalist

As part of his Be The Solution tour, Michael Strong will be speaking at three of SFL’s Regional Conferences -NortheastMid-Atlantic and NYC.

Strong co-founded FLOW with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The FLOW Movement combines freedom, voluntary exchange and enterprise from the classical liberal tradition with love, compassion, social and environmental consciousness to create an inspiring and integrated vision.

One project of FLOW is Conscious Capitalism, in which they are working to create an alliance of C-level executives with aligned visions with regard to capitalism.

“At its core, Capitalism is about voluntary association and collaboration, which is one of the reasons Capitalism works, why it won the battle with Socialism in the 20th Century, and why it continues to persist and flourish. But the abuses of the early 21st century (e.g. Tyco, Worlcom, Enron), the recent financial “meltdown,” and ongoing issues including the social costs of externalities, the extreme and widening gap between executive and worker compensation, among others, have undermined trust in business and confidence in Capitalism.

Register today for one of SFL’s Regional Conferences and the chance to hear from the visionary entrepreneur Michael Strong.

October 9 – Drexel University in Philadelphia

October 23 – Columbia University in New York
November 6 – Harvard University in Boston

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SFL’s Impact, Conservatives, and Homocon 2010

GOProud, an organization that “represents gay conservatives and their allies” announced that it would be holding a special reception in NYC called “Homocon 2010″.  To many’s surprise, the Keynote Speaker of the evening will be Ann Coulter.  To make things even more interesting, an outspoken libertarian, PayPal founder Peter Thiel (check out an essay he published with Cato Unbound here), will be hosting the event in his home.  In announcing that Thiel will be hosting the event, the Daily Caller highlighted the recent shift in conservative attitudes towards the issue of homosexuality and the rights of individuals who are homosexual.  Most interesting was the end of the article:

GOProud sponsor Lisa DePasquale, who organizes the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest gathering of conservatives in the country, told TheDC that she has seen a general shift in attitudes toward gays among conservatives.

“The movement in general has been supportive of lots of different groups,” she said, adding that she was not speaking on behalf of her organization. “Part of it has to do with younger generations of people now running the other [conservative] groups and I think that probably helps. Most people seem to be okay with it.”

Could it be that Ms. DePasquale is referring to the group of young people below?  (And if so, can we start saying that SFL and the student movement for liberty is starting to change conservative minds?)

Read the full Daily Caller article here.

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The Future of the GOP

Students For Liberty Campus Coordinator Megan Roberts of the University of Missouri has a great op/ed in her student newspaper The Maneater.  She observes that many young people are turned off the the GOPs offensive foreign policy and intrusive domestic policies. She argues that if the GOP is to have a future, it must recognize these realities and embrace a new style of republicanism.

Generally speaking, both the left and the right are guilty of some level of hypocrisy. Conservatives, who often lament over expanded government spending and new federal programs, are content to spend billions (or even trillions) expanding federal programs overseas through wars, nation building and increasing foreign aid to politically favorable countries, all while encroaching on individual liberties through legislation like the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the PATRIOT Act and countless others.

Liberals tout their support for civil liberties yet constantly seek ways to increase government control in every individual decision, from healthcare to education and even down to organic food choices, all while increasing taxes and business regulations, thereby stripping individuals of their economic freedom.

The “new Republican” must see the inherent hypocrisy in both the left and the right, and reject it. If Republicans are to be against expanding federal programs domestically, they should also oppose expanding them abroad.

If Republicans respect individual liberties, privacy and property rights as they claim they do, they should also seek to lessen government involvement in personal matters such as marriage. Freedom cannot come piece by piece. It is a single concept and must be defended at all times. Young people recognize this, and the GOP is following suit.

You can read the full article here: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2010/8/31/future-gop/

It is definitely worth a read.

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Dealing With Police

Photo by Scott Stuk

In an event co-sponsored with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Arizona State University Students For Liberty brought in defense attorney Marc Victor for a “Know Your Rights” event.  The event was covered in the university’s newspaper, The State Press:

Victor said that police officers can take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge of the law. Being aware of your basic rights can be the difference between a conviction and an acquittal, he said.

ASU students picked up valuable advice from defense attorney Marc Victor, and many are excited for the Southwest Students For Liberty Regional Conference being held at ASU on October 16th.

The theme of “knowing your rights” will be continued at the conference with Jay Fleming, a former undercover narcotics officer who is now part of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.  Fleming has experience the War on Drugs from an officer’s standpoint, and attests, “The drug war I fought was not about ending drug use—it was about money and power.”

Fleming has made it his mission to speak out and expose the problems he‟s seen in the futile US policy of a “War on Drugs.”  Register today for what will surely be an interesting and exciting conference!

Learn more here: http://politicalconferences.org/2009/10/phoenix-conference-asu/

RSVP to the Facebook event and invite your friends!

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