Conservative culture rep outcome shows Tufts made the right choice

Last week, the Tufts community chose not to add a voting representative of conservatism to the ranks of Culture Representatives within the TCU Senate. This Viewpoint is directed mainly toward those in the community who disagree with that choice, and attempts to defend the decision while remaining as neutral as possible with respect to sociopolitical ideology. In my opinion, the issue should never have come to a vote in the first place.

There is something about the concept of conservativism as a culture that distinguishes it from the cultures currently represented in the Senate. That difference lies in the conservative community's implicit reliance on ideology for cohesion. That is, what it means for a person to be a member of the conservative community is that the person subscribes to a sufficient number of conservative views on issues we generally recognize to be divisive. The Asian Community at Tufts, the Association of Latin American Students, the Pan African Alliance, and the TTGLBC are not ideologically based.

This might seem like a small difference, but it is extremely important when discussing whether or not a given community is adequately represented within a voting body, because adequate representation requires that community positions be known and understood, whether or not they are agreed with. The case for extending special voting rights to representatives of certain communities depends on the idea that it is the only way to ensure that someone in the voting body really understands those communities' positions on various issues. And despite whether or not, in our heart of hearts, we really believe this to be true of the communities currently being represented, we can prove it isn't true for the conservative community.

The short version of the proof is one line long: conservativism is an ideology. That is, the question of where conservatives are coming from always has an easy answer (conservative ideology) and we can consult an ideology without being ideologues ourselves.

The lengthy and responsible version of the proof is two lines long: conservatism is an ideology, and people know about it. The TCU Senate funds a major campus media outlet devoted to the explanation and advocacy of conservative thought. Conservatives now enjoy control of both the executive and legislative branches of the US federal government. Anyone who takes an interest in national politics realizes that conservatism appeals to a lot of different people, and I imagine they would be interested in finding out what all the fuss was about, even in the absence of a thriving and proactive conservative press.

The fact that most people on campus (be they students or professors) disagree with a particular ideology bears no relation to whether its outnumbered adherents are adequately represented in the Senate. If people understand it well enough to decide that they disagree with it, then it is getting its fair shake. On the other hand, there may be no easy way to understand why a community, held together by a subjective experience that feels entirely real to the "in-group" but can come off sounding ethereal to the "out-group", is reacting in a certain way to a certain issue without actually being part of the "in-group" ourselves.

To ensure that understanding makes it all the way into the Senate voting body, we took out the big hammer and created culture reps with full voting rights, and maybe we over killed the problem. What's clear is that it is a problem that does not exist for conservatives because of the inherent characteristics of conservatism as an ideology.

Jared Hunter is a member of the College of Special Studies.