When reading headlines from conservative news outlets about the antics on college campuses, one is immediately left with the impression that these schools are irredeemable cesspools of sexual deviance, racial identitarianism, and anti-American hate. This is somewhat true. But because loud and proud Social Justice Warriorism often borders on absurdity, such headlines can exaggerate dysfunction, painting an overly bleak picture of higher education.

This past academic year, as an outspoken conservative at Northwestern University, I have accumulated several stories that offer a more nuanced view. They suggest that not all departments have fallen prey to ideological uniformity — and that even among committed leftists, there exist open minds willing to engage with heterodox ideas.

In February, my Young Americans for Freedom chapter hosted Dr. Arthur Laffer, the intellectual architect of both Reagan and Trump’s tax cuts. When publicizing the event, I reached out to all of the economics professors I had taken classes with, including the department chair. This outreach proved fruitful. Several professors shared the event with their students, and two profs, including the chair, attended the lecture.

Fast-forwarding to May, my YAF chapter hosted Ian Haworth, a conservative columnist and commentator, to give a lecture titled “The Cost of Casual Sex,” wherein he examined the detrimental effects of hookup culture. This event, though modest in attendance due to advertising delays, was by far the most invigorating. Following Haworth’s pre-prepared remarks, there was a robust Q&A period that lasted 45 minutes. Students raised thoughtful questions on topics such as pornography bans and the feasibility of reversing the tide of hookup culture.

The most surprising part of the evening came after the formal event. Three audience members who asked some of the most probing questions revealed they were part of Northwestern’s Platypus Society, a Marxist group dedicated to reviving radical Left thought through engagement with philosophers like Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx.

These acolytes of Karl Marx ended up joining us at our post-event dinner we hold at the end of all our campus lectures. Over dinner, we discussed race, national identity, and sexual morality. Remarkably, the conversation was civil and rich, without a single invocation of slurs like “racist,” “sexist,” or “bigot.”

I was taken aback. In nearly every prior interaction I have had with liberals or leftists on campus, accusations of prejudice were the norm. Yet these students — who were further to the left than anyone I had previously met — were open-minded and in some cases even agreed with my critiques of mainstream views on race and identity politics.

Ironically, members of the Platypus Society were far more open-minded than members of the College Democrats. For example, this past spring, I also participated in a debate with the latter on the topic of education in America. During the debate, the topic of Affirmative Action came up. I made the standard conservative argument that the practice of race-conscious admissions hurts its supposed beneficiaries by putting them in academic environments where their academic credentials are lower than their peers’. This view was immediately denounced as “problematic” by my opponent and elicited murmurs and laughter from the audience.

This response exposed a troubling lack of familiarity with basic conservative arguments regarding a major national policy debate. If the university were seriously committed to its mission of exposing students to challenging and novel ideas, it would have responded to the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action ruling by organizing forums exploring arguments in favor of and against race-conscious admissions policies. Instead, it issued a press release decrying the Court’s commitment to equality, promising to continue evaluating applications with race in mind.

Still, the most eye-opening moment of the year came during an Associated Student Government (ASG) Senate meeting in late May. Our YAF chapter had appealed for an additional $5,000 to pay for our two speaker honorariums, which usually cost $3,000-$5,000 each. During the hearing, a student senator representing the black student group For Members Only (yes, that student group) asked, “Why should the student body give additional funding to your student group when you have hosted a known racist on our campus?”

The racist in question? Dr. Arthur Laffer.

That Arthur Laffer could be considered a “known racist” reveals how truly inept this senator is at doing basic research on the Internet. Anyone familiar with the career of Dr. Laffer knows that he is deeply committed to the well-being of black Americans. He has written extensively about how government regulations and anti-poverty programs have created perverse incentives that have stalled the economic progress of black Americans and made his own proposals of policies he believes would help them.

Unfortunately, the FMO senator’s laziness combined with her desire to publicly humiliate me was well-received and echoed by the other senators present. Another senator put his bias on display, asking, “When money is tight, why could you not just host one speaker this year instead of two?”

This question fascinated me. Because just a few minutes earlier, he was voting to give Rainbow Alliance an extra couple thousand dollars for its Queer Formal, which would now be hosted at a more expensive off-campus venue instead of on campus because “queer students do not feel safe at Northwestern.” Evidently, concerns about budgetary restraint vanish when an event serves progressive causes.

Ultimately, our appeal to get an additional $5,000 only got us an additional $500, making our appeal the least successful one on a percent basis during the entire Appeals Senate.

My takeaway from this year is that Northwestern has not been fully consumed by woke ideology. Within prestigious departments, there are professors committed to free inquiry and the exchange of diverse ideas. And even within the Left, there are students willing to engage with conservative arguments without resorting to the usual tactics of slander and name-calling.

If universities are to once again become places of free inquiry, dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the preservation of Western Civilization, the change must begin with the students themselves. Institutions do not think; people do. And the dominant ideology on campus persists not because it is enforced from the top down but because it is embraced by a vocal and dominant minority of students. The biggest interest group sustaining the current campus hostility to free speech, academic freedom, and heterodox ideas is not the administration or faculty — it’s the students who demand ideological conformity and punish dissent.

To reclaim the university as a place of debate and intellectual rigor, we must change the culture of the student body. You change the people, and you change the institution. Until students begin to value truth over ideology and courage over conformity, universities will remain what their students make them.