PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – Conservative philosophy resurfaced in September among students at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) after nearly 50 years of silence.
RISD Conservatives, with the help of Arlington, Virginia’s Leadership Institute (LI), established a new and growing conservative presence amidst a formidable leftist-dominated faculty and student body. Conservative art students now have a voice on their college campus.
Zach Brown, founder and president of RISD Conservatives and a sophomore illustration major, said, “I became politically involved once I came to college because I was constantly being fed liberal propaganda.”
Brown, who considers Ronald Reagan his personal hero, described Rhode Island School of Design as an “isolated environment which attracts mostly liberal students and faculty. RISD is a haven for extremely left-wing ideology.”
School policy mandates student groups must have a faculty sponsor to become an officially-recognized club. Leaders of the new, student group said there are currently no known conservative faculty members at the school, but the students hope to find a professor who values diversity of thought and will consent to be their sponsor.
“Students and professors at RISD are extremely open-minded, until you disagree with them,” Brown explained. “If you do, you are either wrong or a redneck hillbilly.”
Brown compared being conservative on a modern college campus to being a suspected Communist during the Red Scare: “It seems like a similar situation to the Hollywood blacklisting of the late 1940s and 50s.”
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