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MSU College Republicans kick off semester with visit from Lt. Gov. Brian Calley

September 9, 2014
<p>Lt. Gov. Brian Calley talks to MSU College Republicans on Sept. 8, 2014, at Wonders Hall. This was MSU College Republicans' first meeting of the year. Jessalyn Tamez/The State News. </p>

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley talks to MSU College Republicans on Sept. 8, 2014, at Wonders Hall. This was MSU College Republicans' first meeting of the year. Jessalyn Tamez/The State News.

The MSU College Republicans gathered for their first meeting of the semester Monday night, joined by a guest — Lt. Governor Brian Calley.

A former student of MSU, Calley is currently the youngest Lt. Gov. in the U.S. at age 37. Calley worked in banking before he was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives serving in the minority both of his terms. After running for the state Senate, Calley left the campaign to become Rick Snyder’s running mate in 2010.

At the Republicans’ meeting, Calley spoke at length about getting college students more engaged in politics as a whole and in Michigan’s upcoming elections.

“There’s never enough hands to run a statewide campaign,” Calley said. “As for how to get involved, there’s a lot of different ways. Right now, as we are heading into the campaign (season), there are local, state, legislative, and statewide races all happening right now and there are all kinds of room for involvement. It might be internships directly on the campaign, volunteering on campaign events, it can be door-to-door activities.”

Calley urged members of the student organization “to be that voice of a conservative answer to Michigan’s biggest problems,” by being “advocates right on campus.”

President Lisa Jankowski said the college republicans had some big goals for the year.

“We definitely want to get students more involved on campus. We want to make sure Republicans and conservatives that are on campus know that there is a group out there for them if they want to get involved. We want to get all our candidates elected so we want to get our students involved in those campaigns.”

Calley stressed the importance of future-oriented policies as an important way to choose between candidates.

“Are the candidates talking about what is possible, about the future, or are they talking about returning to policies of the past? And the policies of our past were not good for our students,” he said, noting policies that targeted students and their debt.

In the first year of Snyder’s administration, MSU’s funding from the state government was cut 15 percent when Michigan faced a more than $1 billion deficit.

Since then, despite a surplus in the state government’s budget, funding has not returned to previous levels, cuts that Snyder’s opponent, Democrat Mark Schauer, has highlighted.

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