One of the highlights of the International Students For Liberty Conference is the Annual Awards Presentation.  This year, SFL will present awards for Student of the Year, Event of the Year, and Student Group of the Year.  The awards will be presented at the International Conference on Friday, February 18th.

The winners will be chosen by a combination of the SFL Executive Board as well as open voting by the public!  Each person can vote once per day up through Monday, February 14th at 11:59PM ET.

Cast your vote now at this link: www.surveymonkey.com/2011sflawards

Today we take a closer look at the nominees for Event of the Year.  In alphabetical order, the 2011 nominees!

Event of the Year

Kent State Liberty Alliance: Political Prisoners Protest

The Kent Student Liberty Alliance used a Students For Liberty Protest Grant to highlight the injustices that runs deep through our criminal justice system, building a mock jail cell on campus to draw attention to the issue. Historically Kent State has been a hotbed of political activism, but apathy has crept over these students as of late, except for the students of the Liberty Alliance who sat in mock prison cells all day despite the 40 degree temperatures.

The group used five victims of unjust incarceration to highlight their point: Marc Emery, a Canadian activist serving 5 years for selling marijuana seeds; Edward and Elaine Brown, an elderly NH couple serving 37 years for tax evasion (essentially a death sentence due to their age); Cirino Gonzalez, who was arrested for aiding and abetting the Browns when he lived with them while blogging about tax evasion; and Eric McDavid, who is serving 19 years for conspiracy. The Kent event sought to bring attention to this issue, and they succeeded. With a mock prison and guest speakers, including Marc Emery’s wife, the event was a huge success.

“We’re at Kent State to raise awareness to the student body and help students understand that there are people in prison right now that have done no harm to anyone,” he said.  “They’re just political like me. We’re here to stand up for everyone’s rights.”

George Mason University Students For Liberty: Hyper-inflate our School Loans Out of Existence

The students of Mason Liberty came up with an ingenious idea to educate their fellow students on the danger of inflation while signing up new members. They set up a table and approached students on camera with a petition asking students to help hyperinflate school loans out of existence so that students would not have to pay back their loans. The petition proposed increasing inflation by 50 percent every month for the next year. 9 out of 10 students signed the petition.

The petition had two purposes: one was to hand out copies of The Economics of Freedom, which breaks down common economic fallacies students often unfortunately fall for. The other was to make a video of the petition as means to help students understand that they need to be much more aware of the harmful public policies and regulations they support or do not reject. As Mason Liberty leader Daniel Shiner stated in the ending statement of the video, “although our school loans would be inflated out of existence, so would the rest of society.”

Pepperdine College Libertarians: Free Speech Wall

The wall was a special project of the Pepperdine CLs to celebrate Constitution Day and spur discussion on campus. The project itself had a rocky beginning, and the group had to jump through many bureaucratic hoops in order to exercise free speech on a campus often hostile to open expression. The project was a tremendous success, but later in the week the wall was destroyed by sophomore student Joel Lopata. Lopata took it upon himself to protect the students of Pepperdine from anything that might be deemed controversial or offensive, in fact he described the wall as, “nameless, faceless and very cowardly.”

While some of the statements on the wall were most certainly offensive and controversial, many of them were inspiring and inquisitive. The comments ranged from criticisms of the college and religion to political statements about tolerance and America’s policies towards Palestine. Some even used the wall to voice private thoughts, similar to PostSecret, like one student who admitted his desire to be Asian.

Lopata’s act of destruction galvanized the campus community around the issue of free speech. The College Libertarians, College Republicans, Young Democrats, and Green Team started rebuilding the wall early the next morning. The event garnered significant media attention on campus and from national organizations such as FIRE, Reason.TV, and Bureaucrash. By the next morning it was larger than ever before.

University of Nevada-Reno Students for Liberty: Abolish the ASUN Festival

The UNR Students for Liberty finally grew tired of the wasteful status quo of their student government, the ASUN. So, they came up with a simple idea to fight back: show other students just how wasteful the student government is. The UNR SfL members mastered the bureaucracy so they could obtain as much funding as possible. Then in deciding what to spend it on, they asked themselves, in the words of UNR SfL member John Russell, “What are the most ridiculous things we can buy with other students’ money?”

The answer: a festival. Not just any festival, but an Abolish the ASUN festival. It would have pizza. It would have a bounce house. It would have a mechanical bull. And it would have ponies. Yes, ponies. By truthfully wasting funds, and sharing that waste with as many people as they could, the UNR SfL was able to show the nature and reality of governmental systems to the thousands of students at UNR.

Stunned by the grandiose gesture, hundreds of people agreed to sign a petition which put the option to abolish the student government on the March 2011 ASUN ballot.

They created a video documenting the planning process, and the event was covered by the local news.

University of Texas Libertarian Longhorns: John Lott & More Guns, Less Crime

On the morning of Tuesday, September 28, the University of Texas community was shocked by a gunman, later identified as UT student Colton Tooley. He walked down 21^st street, shooting his weapon into the air and ground while yelling and screaming. He then entered a library and took his own life. Fortunately no one else was hurt in the process.

Coincidentally, the Libertarian Longhorns and the UT Students for Concealed Carry on Campus had invited Dr. John Lott, famed writer of the book “More Guns, Less Crime”, to speak on campus that same day. The event could no longer be held on campus, but due to the importance of the issue, the group leaders moved quickly to re-organize it. Local bookstore Brave New Books generously agreed to host the talk and extended their normal business hours to accommodate. The Libertarian Party of Texas assisted students by notifying media outlets and local groups that the event would continue at the new location.

The result was nothing short of phenomenal. At least 125 students and Austinites crammed into Brave New Books to hear John Lott speak about his research on the effects of gun control laws on violent crime. Television, radio, and newspaper outlets interviewed attendees and recorded footage of the event. Their response to the presentation was very positive.