National Conservative Coming Out Day gives conservatives an opportunity to voice their opinions and lay their beliefs out for all to see.In celebration of this day on Wednesday, the Ball State University College Republicans sponsored presentations from Chuck East, the secretary for the Delaware County Republicans, and Tim Harris, a state representative from Grant County.To start off, East said he wanted to talk about the differences between conservatives and liberals as well as to touch on the topic of conservative activism - a subject he feels conservatives need to work on."Progressives think their ideas are new, but they never are," East said. "Everything under the sun has been tried, and the things that worked and have continued to work are the things that we republicans try to uphold."Although activism is known as a staple of the extreme far left, Chuck contended that conservatives should try their hand at it as well."The left has activism, but we are trying to start it on our side as well," East said. "Part of activism is shaking things up. Lefts sometimes say and do crazy things, but you don't hear about the right doing those things, because we police ourselves. We aren't like ELF We're not going to blow stuff up to make our point."Though he said he didn't feel violence was the answer, he still thought radical action was needed to focus people's minds on the problem."There was this group of students about five years ago who decided to have a bake sale to raise money, but the price of the cookies you bought depended on your ethnicity," East said. "If you were Latino, for example, then you were charged $1.50, an Asian might be charged $2, someone who was black might be charged $2.50, and a white person would be charged $3. That makes people mad, and it let's them see the differences and injustices in the world. That is exactly the kind of thing we need."He also touched on the stereotype of republicans in the media, and how this has affected pedestrian views of republicans."You can't fit yourself into the model, because there isn't a model," he said. "It's offending to me when someone tries to make me fit into a two-dimensional ideal with these prejudices. I volunteer for an organization that goes out and rescues run away kids. I've been recycling since the early 90s. I may not be a typical republican, but I contend there is no 'typical' republican."State Representative Tim Harris, who spoke after East, focused his presentation on education."Public education is a monopoly," he said. "We don't allow for monopolies in business because it takes away the benefits of competitiveness. In public education, all the competitiveness is gone. We provide free public education to every one, but the problem is that low income minority students are expected to fail, and there is no incentive for people to try harder to help them succeed. It doesn't have to be this way." One way he contended this could be solved is through school vouchers."I think we should provide vouchers for low income students at failing schools so that they can choose a school that is a better fit for them," Harris said. "Students deserve an alternative, and at the same time, the failing schools are more inclined to improve because they now have to compete with other schools who are doing well academically."He also said he was fed up with new legislation that wasn't necessary. So much of it, he said, could just be solved by enforcing the current laws."A bill passed recently that required schools to form a committee to define for that specific school what a bully is, and then to define how that school would deal with a bully," Harris said. "This legislation wasn't needed. Schools already know what bullies are, and they have been dealing with them since the inception of schooling."Both speakers touched on other issues important to conservatives, but spoke about the same core values.Though conservatives and liberals do things their own ways, they both hold the same goal to make society a better place to live, they said.
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