There are no current politically-affiliated clubs on the University of Idaho campus, according to Engage UIdaho, an application which lists campus events and student organizations.
While clubs promoting activist causes exist — such as Generation Action, Local Herbivores and Students for Life — these groups do not align with specific political parties.
Clubs such as the Young Democrats and Turning Point are sporadically active, but for these groups to be official, they would need to appoint a non-student advisor.
For a campus club to become official, it must have at least three student-members and a faculty or staff advisor. There must also be a constitution or bylaws for the club.
Another requirement is to attend a handbook training and submit an application for Engage UIdaho.
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Assistant Director of the Department of Student Involvement Lynsie Clott helps students who want to start a club on campus. She guides them through various processes such as creating the constitution or bylaws.
“We try to make it as easy as possible for students with common interests to start a club or refresh an old club that’s gone dormant,” Clott said. “And so, it’s the nature of clubs that they just sort of come and go, depending on the current student population.”
In order to find an advisor to the club, the student can reach out to past advisors or try to find a new one if the club is completely new and hasn’t been established in the past.
After the student reaches out to the advisor, the advisor agrees to the level of involvement in the club.
“I advise the student officers, but they go out and do all the work, all the leg work of initiating the club and keeping it rolling,” Clott said. “And we just try to remove all the barriers and just be the support system and show them how to be a functioning club.”
Zack Bishop, a UI fifth-year student studying political science, is currently the president of the Young Democrats at the University of Idaho. Bishop has been involved in the club for around two years with this being his first year as president.
“Yeah so we missed the meeting, there’s some confusion on the advisor status,” Bishop said. “So, our last advisor, we haven’t been able to contact them and so now we’re in the transition of finding a new advisor.”
Bishop said the club hopes to find an advisor soon. Once they do, he said they can quickly submit their application to Engage UIdaho and become an official club.
Although they are not an official club, they still have weekly meetings and activities they participate in. Bishop said currently there are around six or seven members who show up to meetings. However, there are over 200 people on their email list.
“We’re in contact with a lot of the student base, but they just don’t show up to the meetings,” Bishop said.
The Young Democrats participate in various community events. For example, a few members of the club canvassed for city council candidates Sandra Kelly, Anne Zabala and Maureen Laflin, for the Nov. 5 election.
Bishop said he understands students aren’t politically engaged on campus. Whether that be in the Young Democrats, the College Republicans or other groups. Bishop said it’s especially worrisome that in a conservative state, the more conservative-leaning groups aren’t organizing.
“It’s kind of worrisome to me for our own growth that the (College Republicans) aren’t even a presence anymore, because it means ‘Oh boy, people really don’t care about politics,’” he said.
Jesse Watson, a UI fourth-year student studying operations management, has been involved with Turning Point on a national level, but not at the university.
Watson said he wasn’t involved in the local level because he had other responsibilities at the local level and didn’t want another large time commitment. He said he would fly to conferences and participate in Turning Point activities on a national level, which was less of a time commitment than participating at a local level.
According to Turning Point’s website, the organization was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and their mission is “to educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
“I first got started in Turning Point because as a young conservative on campus, college campuses across the country are typically liberal, including ours,” Watson said. “They lean more left, and so I felt like a lot of the time, a lot of the focus was on that left-leaning ideology on college campuses and right-leaning ideologies are little more put on the back burner. So, Turning Point as an organization was attractive to me.”
Watson said he had stopped being involved with them because they are “a little more radical right” than he liked.
“I think that a lot of people have had a problem with civil discourse and not being able to communicate with each other anymore,” Watson said. “And I feel like both on the left and the right there’s these groups that are no longer willing to talk with each other and just attack each other.”
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Watson said the lack of political engagement is not a generational problem, it’s an American problem.
“A lot of people just aren’t engaged in politics. I think the young generation, they get a lot of their news from places like Twitter, which is not the greatest place to get your news from,” Watson said.
In addition, Watson said this generation grew up with parents telling them not to tell others who they voted for.
“I think you need to be proud of who you’re supporting and I think that you need to be charging forward on your candidates and stuff like that, and call people out when they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, what you elected them for,” Watson said. “And praise them for things that you did elect them for.”
Watson said he is unsure as to why there aren’t politically affiliated groups on campus, but there are more groups involved with activist causes.
“Maybe there’s just no one that’s come around that’s just really passionate about starting an organization and running it efficiently maybe,” Watson said. “I mean we’ve had a couple groups pop up in the past, of very specific activist groups.”
Two groups Watson referred to were the Student for Accountability and Safety Group calling for Rob Spear to step down after the mishandling of the 2013 sexual assault case of Mairin Jameson and the Students for Denise group calling for the reinstatement of Denise Bennet.
“At UI, I don’t think that there’s a ton of political charge,” Watson said. “I never felt, like Berkeley for example, where there’s just like this rising political unrest. And if a student group brings a speaker on campus there’s going to be protests and riots and all this stuff. I just have never felt that way at UI.”
Nicole Hindberg can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @HindbergNicole.