Natasha is a senior at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Campus Coordinator at Students For Liberty.  In Natasha’s words, working as a Campus Coordinator for Students For Liberty has been a life-changing experience for her.  This holiday season, you can help SFL give the gift of liberty to other students across the world by making a donation at www.givethegiftofliberty.org.  This is Natasha’s story:

My quest for liberty really started when I was a toddler.  I lived in Juneau, Alaska and was often stricken with boredom which forced me to be particularly creative in my activities.  The climate was rainy and wet in Juneau, so there was a thriving worm population in my front yard.  I was extremely sympathetic towards the worms; I couldn’t imagine a more miserable existence than squirming around underground in the wet and cold darkness.  Being the benevolent little child I was, I took it upon myself to improve the lives of these worms.  I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting for them than to ride around on the back of my tricycle, I kept telling myself how lucky these select worms were.   I dug up about 10 of them and put them on the back of my tricycle and blasted around the block a few times, then stopped to check on my worms.  They were all dead.

I had no idea what was going on, so I repeated the process with new worms (I figured all of these ones must have been sick or something).  This time when I stopped to check on them, they had all died again.  I realized at that moment, that the worms were not sick, but that I had killed them.   I was mortified.  I was trying to improve the lives of these worms, but despite my good intentions, I had ended their lives altogether.  I learned an important life lesson: good intentions do not always produce good results.  As I grew older I realized this lesson was equally applicable to the government.  Just as I could not determine the needs and wants of the worms as well as they could themselves, the government cannot determine the needs and desires of its people as well as they can themselves.

Philosophically I have been libertarian since that experience, but did not discover libertarianism until I was sixteen.  I was wandering around a college campus in Anchorage, and a few students handed me a libertarian party packet.  At first I veered away trying to avoid their propaganda, but was unable to escape without a pamphlet in my hand.  I read the headline “libertarianism” and thought to myself, “libertarianism? What is that? Some sort of super liberal socialists?”, as I was searching for a trash can I opened up the packet and realized all of the platforms of libertarianism were aligned perfectly with my own beliefs.  After feeling isolated in my opinions my entire life, I was ecstatic to learn there was a group of people who thought like me.

When I went off to college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I immediately started searching for a libertarian group to become involved with.  I continued this search for a couple of years, and eventually realized there was not an active group and took it upon myself to start one.  I wish I had known at that time that Students For Liberty had existed.  I didn’t know a single other liberty-minded individual on campus, and was only able to find a few by reaching out to an adult libertarian group that met off campus.  I started the bureaucratic process of creating a student group, and through networking eventually found some other students. I didn’t know I had had access to a network of other pro-liberty individuals through SFL.   It was a very slow start, and if I had the support of Students For Liberty at that time, I know we would have been able to grow much faster and reach out to many more students.

After I started working with a fellow Campus Coordinator for SFL- Chris Eager- we have been able to quadruple the size and scope of our campus group.  Members from our school and other schools in the state of Illinois were able to meet other libertarian students in the region at the Chicago Regional Conference this last October.  The fellowship SFL has provided student groups in the State has increased the passion and involvement of every student who has attended SFL events or joined SFL’s network.

A donation to Students For Liberty will allow other students to spread the message of liberty without going through the painstaking process I did.  This holiday season you have the opportunity to give the priceless gift of liberty to other students.