A strange thing happened at North Carolina State University this month. The student government president decided not to distribute a voter-registration package—because it was too liberal.
In a recent mailing to the N.C. State Student Government, the United States Students Association (USSA) included nearly 15,000 fliers with policy recommendations from leftist groups. It instructed its member schools to give these fliers to all new voters registered on-campus.
The fliers included a postcard that the voters are supposed to mail in, signaling their interests in causes such as global warming and universal health care. The USSA even sternly told their chapters that their voter registration efforts would be judged by the number of mail-in letters. The fliers were created by an organization called “Generation Vote,” a “national alliance of young people who work on issues at the local level.”
Conservative members of State’s student government, including its president, said that they do not intend to distribute the fliers. Jay Dawkins, president of the student body at State, called the fliers “blatant liberal propaganda targeted at our campuses in a thin veil of ‘nonpartisan activism.’”
Dawkins, who once headed the school’s College Republicans, notified T. Greg Doucette, President of the University of North Carolina Association of Student Governments (UNCASG, or ASG). Doucette, also an N.C. State student, is a libertarian and thus opposed to government intrusion.
The fliers came to N.C. State because the University of North Carolina Association of Student Government recently rejoined USSA, which is a member of Generation Vote.
The USSA, founded in 1947, bills itself as the oldest and largest student association in the United States. On its face, USSA advocates for student issues. USSA believes that “education should be accessible for any student regardless of their socio-economic background and identity.” Moreover, it believes that students should have more direct involvement in “identifying the solutions that make education accessible.” While these policies may have government-intervention overtones, they are clearly and directly focused on student issues.
The Association’s ultimate goals affect more than just students; they envision “a just society in which generations of representative leaders understand their power and engage and empower diverse communities to create social change.”
Generation Vote—the group that USSA advocates supporting—pushes what it calls a “Youth Agenda,” which is a list of causes that it wants youths to support, not issues of direct interest to youth. Of the Youth Agenda’s nine planks, only “quality and affordable education” is clearly a student issue.
Besides USSA and other youth organizations, members of Generation Vote include Planned Parenthood, the Center for Progressive Leadership, Choice USA, and the NAACP. Generation Vote is a project of the Tides Center, a non-profit foundation that promotes what it calls social justice.
When the UNC Association of Student Governments discussed joining USSA (which costs the UNC system as a whole $10,000 a year), proponents emphasized the opportunity for a national presence, promotion of student rights, fighting for more financial aid, and taking advantage of USSA’s training workshops.
When Dawkins viewed the fliers sent by Generation Vote, they were all about bigger, more intrusive government. “Take a close look at the groups, issues, and politically charged questions on these cards. I think you’ll see why, as a conservative, I’m highly alarmed,” he wrote in a letter.
T. Greg Doucette, president of the statewide student association, said that his experiences with USSA throughout the past year had prepared him for the latest effort. “I’m not surprised—at all,” he said. “I’m disappointed in the politicization of something as simple as voter registration.” Doucette had spoken against joining USSA.
As a result of this controversy, the Association of Student Governments will likely leave USSA, said Dawkins. “We’ve quickly found that the staff of [USSA] are going to spread their liberal propaganda regardless of our influence. I’ll be personally making the motion to end our membership in the organization at the next ASG meeting.”
Doucette added, “The question will be less a question of ‘will we remain members?’ and more a question of ‘what do we want to do in terms of national leadership?’… I don’t want us to spend the financial resources and brainpower to remain in USSA unless that involvement comes with an expectation.”
That expectation includes sweeping reforms that would return USSA to what UNCASG and N.C. State students think it should be: an advocate for students.