The Magazine

Right out of College

Erin Sheley, conservative coed.

Sep 3, 2001, Vol. 6, No. 47 • By ERIN SHELEY
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WHEN I LEFT HOME for my freshman year of college three years ago, my mother and father did what every diligent parent since Polonius has: They sat me down for the Talk. Unlike most 18-year-olds about to set off into the world, however, I did not receive the usual warnings about drugs, alcohol, or my maidenhood. As I was headed for Harvard University, famous for its dearth of both social scene and attractive men, perhaps these didn’t seem like pressing concerns. Instead, my mother placed her hand on mine, gazed at me earnestly, and, with tear-filled eyes, implored, "Honey, . . . don’t become a liberal."

Her fears were well founded. Of some 2,000 faculty members at Harvard, all of 6 identify themselves as conservative. On the way to class each morning, I pass a Communist bookstore, a gaggle of protestors wielding flourescent "Free Mumia" posters, and, if the weather’s good, an encampment of Abercrombie-clad Progressive Students Labor Movement members subjecting Harvard Yard to their noise pollution and odor while trying to replace the collective bargaining process of the university workers’ union with their own smoothie-sipping authority. Once I actually enter the lecture hall, the timbre of discussion is much the same—sans smoothies.

And yet I was not tempted. I had figured that being surrounded by the most brilliant liberal minds in the country might make me waver in my own beliefs. After all, as a pro-gay marriage vegetarian from California, I’ve often strayed from the GOP line. But being immersed in left-wing intellectualism—even subjected to the chastisements of my friends in the dining hall each evening—only made me more steadfast in my perceptions.

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