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Home News World Series MVP Curt Schilling to Visit CUNE

By Victoria Cameron

 

Concordia’s College Republicans are bringing their first speaker to campus. Conservative Curt Schilling, a World Series MVP who won three championships, will be speaking on “My Faith and How it Impacted Life, Family, and Baseball.”

The presentation will be Oct. 10. College Republicans reached out to multiple organizations to coordinate this event. The event is sponsored by Young America’s Foundation, and the Nebraska Grand Old Party (GOP) agreed to promote it. The chapter of College Republicans at University of Nebraska-Lincoln was informed of the event and their members are eager to come to hear Schilling.

“He’s a speaker through YAF, we booked him through there,” College Republicans President senior Angela Bell said. “This will actually be his very first college lecture, he’ll go on to do a lot more but we’re kind of his starting spot.”

College Republicans is a club that has existed before at Concordia, but died down until it was revitalized two years ago. They have done some events over the past two years, but have been looking to grow further. Bringing their first speaker to Concordia is their largest event to date. They hope to continue to progress and bring more speakers in the future.

“We noticed that strictly political events and political speakers don’t bring in a lot of people at Concordia, so we thought that, you know, a former athlete who’s going to be talking about baseball and faith would bring in a lot of different people from campus and the community and hopefully just start discussions on different topics that he’s talking about,” Bell said. “People that come don’t have to agree with him politically on everything but I think it’s healthy to just start discussions and be able to have these conversations on campus.”

Past activities of College Republicans include campaign work such as door knocking and phone banking, attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, and the Never Forget Project, a 9/11 tribute at the Parade of Flags. CPAC is an annual conference with many important political speakers in Washington, D.C. College Republicans plans to continue these activities and broaden their range so that all students have an opportunity to politically engage with their community.

“The point of College Republicans in general is for different Republican organizations to tap into a group of volunteers that are ready to go, but you know one goal that we’ve always kind of had on campus is just giving opportunities to students,” Bell said. “It doesn’t have to be people who are wanting to go into politics as a career, but just to get involved, whether that be getting involved in their community with political elections or maybe just volunteering at the VFW, internships, we just want to give students those kinds of experiences.”

College Republicans’ overarching organization is the College Republican National Committee. CRNC enables schools to open up their own chapters of College Republicans, and has seen growth in Nebraska alone in recent years. There are new chapters in Omaha, Creighton and Hastings, which shows an increasing excitement in politics on college campuses. Concordia’s own chapter is also growing, with close to 40 people showing up to their first meeting of the year.

“People usually get involved [in politics] after college into the adult life so it’s good experience and gives you some background on it,” College Republicans Vice President senior Luke Zoller said. “You get to formulate different ideas, opinions, and hear different sides of arguments so whether it does help you in your field, I think either way it’s beneficial for students to get involved.”

Schilling’s presentation will take place Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Weller Chapel. College Republicans hopes to see the space filled with students and community members from every major and background.

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