Students Quiet On Giuliani Support

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by Nicole Allan | Sep 27, 2007 9:55 am

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Posted to: Politics

giuliani%20photo.jpg Either there aren’t many Rudy Giuliani supporters at Yale, or they don’t want to talk about it. Of the eight Yale students who turned out to rally behind the Republican’s presidential campaign, most were reluctant to speak publicly and be labeled conservative on a campus known as a liberal hotbed.

The Wednesday night launch meeting of the Yale chapter of Students For Giuliani, attracted seven undergrads and one graduate student. Excepting one female freshman, all the attendees were men, and only three of them would speak openly about why they were there.

Matt Klein, secretary of the Yale College Republicans and founder of the Yale Giuliani chapter, opened the meeting. “The idea of this organization,” he said, “is that we first form a community of those that support Giuliani for president and then create activism both among Yale supporters and on a nationwide level.” The students then settled down to a national telecast during which Giuliani addressed his support groups and summarized his platform, focusing on an aggressive stance against radical Islamic terrorists, a private health care system, and tax cuts.

The first of these policies particularly attracts freshman Paul Needham to the former mayor of his hometown, New York City. (Click here for a New York Times retrospective on Giuliani’s iconic years as mayor.) Though at first reluctant to speak on the record because he did not wish to be branded by his political views, Needham eventually issued a carefully formulated statement: “I support the mayor’s bid for the presidency because I understand the threat radical terrorism poses to the country. I think he has the best chance of leading the Republican Party to the White House and beyond.”

Senior Sudipta Bandyopadhyay approves of Giuliani’s stance on terrorism as well. “He’s very strong on security, enough said,” Bandyopadhyay said. The economics and biology major also identifies with Giuliani’s more centrist views due to his own experience as a member of a minority political party at Yale. “Constantly having my views questioned,” Bandyopadhyay explained, “has freed me to support them. It also forces me to find the middle ground and compromise, which draws me to Giuliani.”

A freshman from New York who wished to remain anonymous supports Giuliani because of his more moderate social politics. “I’ve always considered myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” she said. Certain of Giuliani’s views on social issues—he is pro-choice, to a point—are less right-wing than other Republican candidates, making him more attractive to moderate voters. This freshman does, however, support Giuliani’s hard-line stance on the Patriot Act.

Other attendees were discreet, even secretive, about their participation in Students for Giuliani. Some said that they hadn’t yet decided whether they would vote for Giuliani, and most were reluctant to label themselves as conservatives in such a liberal setting.

Student groups supporting Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been active since last April and have already attracted large followings. In the face of this high-energy activism, it seems Yale Giuliani supporters have a lot of work to do.

Despite the assumption that college campuses are generally politically leftist, however—and the fact that New Haven is essentially a one-party Democratic town—Bandyopadhyay believes conservative politics at Yale have a larger following than often suspected (click here to read a Yale Daily News survey verifying this belief). “A lot of people think we’re a rare species at Yale,” he mused. “But there are a lot more of us than they think.”

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