There is a War Being Waged on Your College Campus and Your Voice Needs to Be Heard

This story is adapted from Frontlines by Isabel Brown.

College alumni are supposed to feel nothing but pride for their alma maters, sporting spirit T-shirts on Saturdays, and flying their school flags on their front porches. I’m supposed to look back on my college years with nothing but fond memories, overjoyed by the four years of fun I was lucky enough to experience. I’m supposed to fill countless photo albums with smiling faces recounting memories from football games or nights out in town. I’m supposed to do everything in my power to write a big check to my alumni association every year, knowing it will help shape the experiences of happy, excited, new students.

I’m not supposed to expose the parts of college they don’t want you to discover. I’m not supposed to tell the whole truth.

Of course, I did enjoy so much of my college experience. I played board games with the other students in my freshman dorm, laughing and telling stories. I drank way too many milkshakes in my dining hall (guilty) and met up with friends in the student center for coffee. I studied hard and deeply loved what I was learning (for the most part — not looking at you, Organic Chemistry). I went to parties, cheered at football games, and served in student government. I was, and still am, so deeply proud to be a Colorado State University (CSU) Ram.

But unlike many college students, I walked around campus with a heavy load — not just a backpack full of my science textbooks, but with the untold, cumbersome experience of being a conservative warrior in a world of leftist indoctrination. I endured situations no ordinary college student should have to face, simply because I had decided it was time for true intellectual diversity to exist at my university. I wanted to start a conversation about our differences of opinion — so why did that make me the number one target on my college campus?

It’s time a conversation about our nation’s college campuses is brought to light.

That’s where I come in.

I recently concluded my journey as a graduate student — for now, anyway — at Georgetown University, having pursued a master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences Policy and Advocacy. While my experience at Georgetown was academically and personally fulfilling and (mostly) free from indoctrination, my undergraduate premed experience at CSU was dramatically different. At CSU, I studied Biomedical Sciences and Spanish Language and began college with the intention of attending medical school after graduation. While I always had a personal interest in understanding current political events, I had no desire to work in politics before starting college. In fact, I was fairly uninvolved politically.

That all changed, however, about halfway through my college experience, when I began living the reality of leftist indoctrination on my campus every day. It was like a siren in my ear, drowning out my focused study of anatomy, chemistry, physiology, and genetics. It was at this point I knew if I did not speak up for conservative values on my campus, it was likely no one else would. This realization took me on an unexpected path toward political activism with Turning Point USA, internships in the US Senate and the White House for the Trump Administration, and pursuing a career in media and politics after graduation.

My campus story will share with you what happens behind the scenes at our nation’s colleges — not just for a few hours when a famous conservative speaker or social media influencer comes to campus — but what was on my exams, spoken by my professors, promoted by my student government, and paid for by my student fees. It’s a perspective that has yet to be fully shared, but one that many of us in Gen Z experience daily in dorms, dining halls, and classrooms. It’s a story that must be told to preserve our American identity.

In the fall of 2018, mainstream media outlets began reporting on a comically absurd story from CSU about how the phrase “long time no see” had been officially deemed by university administrators and student government officials as “derogatory to those of Asian descent.” After sharing the news on my social media, I was contacted by a number of friends and family members jovially stating, “This must be a joke!” Surely, a university wouldn’t go so far as to deem nearly every trivial phrase as offensive to some target population or another — this would yield silence from every student on campus.

As a senior in college at this point, having endured many such absurdities, I knew this was no laughing matter. Every word written about the declaration rang of truth. Rather, this was the perfect illustration of my collegiate experience. Again, I will forever be “proud to be a CSU Ram,” but throughout my four years as a college student, the political-correctness police had irreversibly altered nearly every aspect of the university setting, inside the classroom and out. I had gained substantial knowledge and academic understanding but collected significantly more baffling experiences and memories far removed from reality or even the substance of my curriculum. From being disciplined at my on-campus job after uttering the words “you guys” to being forced to state God was not the creator of the universe on a biology exam, most of these experiences are nearly impossible for most Americans to believe.

I believe that many individuals serving in the faculty and administration at my undergraduate university and other colleges across the nation do have the right intentions, particularly those in the hard sciences and hands-on programs, such as agriculture and mechanics. Many people are still fighting for education to provide the strongest learning institutions possible, but the reality is that most people running our nation’s institutions of higher education are, intentionally or not, propagating a leftist machine that will only continue to degrade the exceptional educational standards we once had in America. This is especially true for “career academics,” those who have never spent significant time in their adult lives away from a college campus and who later earn administrative positions at universities. That’s why it’s oh-so-important to have a massive contingent of faculty at nearly every institution in America dedicated to implementing “diversity initiatives” and changing the curriculum of our students’ classes to fulfill the leftist agenda.

Thanks to my involvement in many extracurricular activities throughout my time in college, like working in the admissions office and serving in student government, I held a front-row seat to the behind-the-scenes efforts undertaken by university administrators and faculty on a daily basis. In this book, you’ll read the stories most college administrators, faculty members, and professors hope you never hear about — because if more students shared their everyday college stories like mine, it very well might completely crumble the foundation of institutional power of America’s colleges and universities. It’s time for America to hear the truth — the good, the bad, and the ugly — if we are to make a vital change for Gen Z and those attending college after us who want to become our next generation of leaders.

My experience is the tip of the iceberg. In fact, millions of Americans like me endure the dystopian reality of a college campus every day, especially conservative students who are willing to risk it all by publicly sharing their conservative identities. They challenge other students and even faculty members to embrace the intellectual freedom that allows us to have a peaceful exchange of ideas. We are quite literally fighting an intellectual war for the future of our nation and world.

My hope is that my book will make you smile (and perhaps even laugh) at the absurdity of today’s American college experience. But more so, I hope these words reveal that America’s young adults, Gen Z, are in desperate need of a single thing — truth. There has perhaps never been a time in global history where young people must filter the difference between fact and fiction so frequently and in such a complex way. For college students, it’s not just in the media — it’s on our final exams, overheard among friends, and uttered from our professors. If our nation is to succeed throughout the next generation, America’s colleges and universities are in desperate need of a reality check.

To learn more about how you can make your voice heard, Frontlines is available on Amazon!

Isabel Brown is a Gen Z conservative voice with a bachelor’s in biomedical sciences from Colorado State University and a master’s in biomedical sciences policy and advocacy from Georgetown. She’s a spokesperson for Turning Point USA and the proud host of a TPUSA production, speaking regularly on campuses nationwide.

Isabel is a former U.S. Senate and White House Intern, has produced content with PragerU, and regularly appears on several news networks. You might recognize her from her photo on the cover of Newsweek magazine. You can follow Isabel on Instagram/Facebook @theisabelbrown and Twitter @theisabelb.