Tennessee Federation of College Democrats

College Democrats dominate campus politics

The leadership of the UTC College Democrats are please to release the following article printed in yesterday’s edition of the University Echo, UTC’s student newspaper. We attribute our organization’s success to the hard work of dozens of our members, who, as a whole, are an incredibly energized, focused group of young poeple.

College Democrats dominate campus politics
By: Heather McPherson
Source: utcecho.com

Although both sides of the political spectrum are represented on UTC’s campus, student Democrats have had a more prominent presence for the last several years.

Democrats and Republicans have organized groups on campus, but most people agree that the College Democrats have been the most noticeable political force at UTC. The College Republicans group is not registered with the school, but it does exist.

“The College Democrats are probably the ones I’ve seen more of,” said Will Williams, director of student rogramming and organizations.

He also cited a pro-life group as being active, but all other clubs — Republican, Green and Libertarian — have disappeared from the university’s radar.

“Most people really don’t know we’re here,” said David Goldman, president of the College Republicans for fall 2005 to spring 2006. “But come fall, we’ll have a regular meeting place [and] we’ll make sure the times we meet on a regular basis are well-known.”

Most political groups agree that the struggle is that people join and work at election time, but don’t want to do anything on an ongoing basis.

“When there’s a big presidential election, everybody’s really active and then it dies down and someone has to restart it about every three years,” said Meredith Preston, president of the College Democrats. “But we’ve actually been going about two to three years now.”

Robert Swansbrough, faculty adviser to the College Democrats, said the secret to a lasting political group is a core of highly committed members.

When the College Democrats elected Preston last year, she vowed to not allow the group to become inactive again.

“We’re actually trying to start a sort of scrapbook for the new people coming in so that if it does die down [again], people have the resources … so they don’t have to start from scratch,” she said.

The Republicans are truly starting from scratch to re-establish themselves.

“The group is young,” Goldman said. “This semester was just a lot of organizational [planning] [and] getting us to where we want to be.”

The club has re-ordered their leadership, begun writing a new constitution, and re-addressed its most basic functions.

Goldman said they decided to do a lot of this after attending the Tennessee College Convention.

“It was a learning experience,” Goldman said. “What we came back with was the feeling that we needed to be involved on the state level and with other presidents of other groups … all the different College Republican groups. We need to be in contact with them and work with them.”

Both groups agree that it’s important for everyone to get involved in political groups.

“College students may feel that the political involvement and political issues really don’t pertain to them and they don’t really have a stake in the issues, but everybody has a stake in political issues,” Goldman said. “Being able to organize [people] in a group makes your voice just a little louder for those in power.”

Swansbrough agreed. “One of the things I’ve found over the years, thinking back during the Vietnam era when I was in graduate school, was that so often college students feel impotent — powerless — because they don’t get involved,” he said. “Politicians really want to attract young people to vote, but the way to really woo and influence lawmakers is to be active, involved and have [the] opportunity to express your views.”

Meeting time and place may vary next year, but currently the College Democrats meet at 4 p.m. on Thursdays in Fletcher Hall. The Republican group meets at 6 p.m. on Thursdays in the UC.

The purpose of the College Democrats is to support the philosophy and candidates of the Democratic Party and to support all efforts to increase student participation in Democratic affairs, according to the group’s constitution.

“[Our purpose is] to get people more involved and get more people aware,” Preston said. “We just want people to be educated on issues and know how they can help. And our primary purpose is to help get Democrats elected.”

The Republicans responded with a more global goal.

“The purpose of the UTC College Republicans is to be an outlet for students to get involved with issues and campaigns that will make a positive impact within the community, state and entire nation,” Goldman said.

“As a group, our mission is to spread our conservative philosophy and core principles for the advancement and empowerment of society. An essential goal of the group is to serve as an environment where our members can develop professional business and leadership skills with the intention of being productive and thoughtful citizens and public servants.”

Though many of the students in both groups are political science majors, other majors are represented as well.

Preston said the College Democrats include environmental science students, English students and a few graduate students. The Republicans have many medical and business students, Goldman said.

For more information on College Democrats, contact Adam Green at Adam-Green@utc.edu.

For the College Republicans, contact Ronald Noe at Ronald-Noe@utc.edu.