I joined this club to make friends but everyone's just racist
It was a normal Friday afternoon in September. I could still see the sun back then, before the snow buried campus and the homework buried my spirit. How I miss those days! Anyways, I was walking home from Putnam Seminar, trying to figure out if the party I’d seen on Instagram charging for admission was a scam (it was, as evidenced by the subsequent police tape). In the middle of The Cut sat a table manned by men. Before I could invent an excuse, I was being introduced to the College Conservatives. They were surprisingly friendly, especially compared to the sign holding lunatic yelling at them nearby.
Thursday rolled around and I showed up to a meeting. I had nothing better to do and no one to talk to, which I now realize was the target demographic. An hour in, the meeting ended and—without anyone standing up, leaving, or so much as blinking—the Young Americans for Freedom meeting began, continuing the exact same conversation. It was like the nesting dolls I had as a child but even creepier. It started with a fairly normal discussion of core American values. You know: freedom, opportunity, McDonalds, semi automatic rifles, McDonalds, and bald eagles.
Naturally, we drifted to immigration. This is where things got weird. One guy was obsessively focused on the Americanness of Somali immigrants. I’d heard of dog whistles but this was a full-blown foghorn: "I am a nativist" and "it’s completely justifiable to ask whether the Minnesotan Somali community is loyal to the US, or just to themselves."
Of course, I’d expected some edgy comments—you know, dehumanizing illegal immigrants or whatever—but not a full-blown manifesto. After the meeting, I was privately reassured that this wasn’t representative of the club as a whole. Foolishly, I believed them. I kept attending. Weeks passed without incident. Maybe it was a one-off. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the foghorn was broken.
Then they announced a party. Finally! My social investment was yielding dividends. Much of that night is a blur of cheap beer and existential dread but a few moments remain seared in my memory. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but I have a distinct recollection of someone arguing that, if you were to remove African Americans, the US school system would be far better. Therefore, it would make sense to deport them en masse.
Even more confusing, there was someone ranting about how transgenders represent a “degeneration of our imagination.” I still don’t know what that means, but I’m open to experimenting with some imaginative degeneracy.
Anyway, I left the party early and stopped attending all events and meetings. One day, out of morbid curiosity, I checked their Discord:
“Your country is violent and plagued with violent people from a violent culture who enact violence on the population at insanely disproportionate rates. I don’t want them to have guns! If the Constitution says otherwise, then the Constitution should quit”
Scrolling up for context (a mistake) revealed “we need to also address group differences in the process,” along with a slew of crime rates by race and discussions of Black culture.
I felt so dirty after this I joined a different, brand-new political club espousing unity. After all, surely they’d be the last people on Earth to promote hateful speech.
The first thing I saw was someone sharing Mein Kampf with the comment “interesting perspective.” I’m told that person is now a card carrying Conservative.
These days, I eat my lunch alone in a Wean bathroom stall. The reels from adjoining cubicles offer an equal level of intellectual discourse, but without any of the problematic statements. The Conservative club, I’ve learned, isn’t a place for debate or friendship. It’s a support for people who miss the good old days, days they never lived but sure were better for everyone who matters.