Lauren Cooley Comes to Campus

Activist visits Santa Clara as part of tourEmma PollansAssociate Reporter February 1, 2018Conservative student activist Lauren Cooley recently spoke at Santa Clara as part of her “Make Campus Great Again” tour, hosted by SCU College Republicans.Cooley discussed her view on the importance of bringing more conservative ideas to college campuses, as well as pushing for political activism. The Jan. 23 talk was the SCU College Republican’s first major speaker event on campus.At 24 years old, Cooley is the Red Alert Politics Editor at the Washington Examiner, where she oversees a team of young writers that cover issues specific to millennials. She also founded the Campus Red PAC during the 2016 presidential election, designed to mobilize conservative voters on college campuses, specifically in Florida.The talk opened with Cooley explaining her personal background and experiences, where she noted that colleges were often unwilling to bring in conservative guest speakers or even people with ideas that differed from the liberal norm found on campuses.Cooley went on to talk about her work and involvement with Turning Point USA, where she learned about the great amount of unregistered college voters. As the 2016 election drew close, she worked to build the Campus Red PAC relying on peer-topeer interaction to register several thousand conservative students. Another area Cooley stressed was the idea of safe spaces.She expanded on that by saying that safe spaces are an unrealistic escape from the real world that we should not rely upon.During the last part of her talk, Cooley gave conservative students advice on how they could “Make Campus Great Again.” This included urging them to fight for free speech, in addition to the importance of having an American flag on campus.Cooley’s main message for conservative students was to follow the idea of “purposeful provocation.” This defined as standing up to something that would impede on freedom of speech and starting a conversation, rather than just loudly protesting everything they might disagree with.Contact Emma Pollans at epollans@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.