Today we begin the profiles for our final category, the Student Group of the Year Award. First off is the American University Students For Liberty
The AU SFL has been one of the most active campus groups during the past year. They kicked things off this past summer, recruiting pre-freshman students during summer orientation. In total they hosted six orientation outreach events that attracted over 100 students. To begin the fall semester strong they hosted Students Rights Week with a number of different events. Along with a screening Indoctrinate U and passing out FIRE Free Speech handbooks they also held a street theater demonstration mocking the University of Delaware’s brainwashing orientation process.
Building off that initial momentum they held a string of events in September including more tabling, participating in the 9/12 March on Washington, hosted the debate “Anarchy: Debating the Extremes of Liberty”, and co-organizing the the DC Forum For Freedom Liberty Retreat. In October they continued their success with “The Obamacare To Come: Healthcare Reform, The Free Market, and You!” – a Talk by Michael Tanner, and “Healthy Competition” where the members dressed up as bureaucrats with doctors’ hygienic masks, created pamphlets on the importance of “Healthy Competition” and distributed them throughout campus. At the end of October they traveled to Philadelphia to participate in the special student edition of Freedom Watch.
In November they returned to Philadelphia for the 2009 Mid-Atlantic Students For Liberty Conference. Upon their return they hosted even more events: “Market Failure: How the government created the financial crisis” with guest Dr. Stephen Horwitz, “Civil Liberties: America’s Most Endangered, Endangered Species!” with former Congressman Bob 
Barr, and finally co-sponsored with the AU Model UN the construction & destruction of AU’s own Berlin Wall.
Their success cannot just be measured by the number of their events. In the past year the size of their meetings and following on Facebook have more than doubled. Since its inception the AU SFL has inspired the launching of two new pro-liberty groups on campus: the AU Students for the Preservation of the Second Amendment and the AU Free Market Society. Their members have gone on to intern at the Libertarian Party, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Charles G. Koch Foundation, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Possibly most important of all, they will be hosting the 2010 International Students For Liberty Conference at American University starting this Friday, February 12th.
