Young Americans for Liberty at Indiana University Bloomington kicked off its first recruitment drive of the year at the campus Student Involvement Fair. It’s held every year during the second week of school and attracts hundreds of students who are seeking new groups to join. Besides myself, one more member of our chapter braved the above 90 degree weather and for four hours, we connected with fellow students. I’m proud to say we were able to recruit 75 new liberty-lovers!

Despite the end success, our recruitment efforts did not start out so smoothly. While things usually go as planned, a true liberty activist will be prepared for mishaps, and know how to handle these types of situations as they come.

Be prepared for university incompetence — and spread liberty anyways.

At the start of the day, I managed to gather up all of our supplies and walk on over to the large “free speech zone” meadow where our involvement fair is held each year. As I made it up to the organization check-in table, I was told that our YAL chapter never submitted registration for the event, thus implying that we were technically not recognized by the university as an official student group, and that they did not reserve us a space or a table. Despite the knowledge that I personally had submitted the registration forms, there was nothing we could do at that point about the university not doing their job and putting us down in the system. You can pretty much expect your university to mess something up at some point or another. But don’t let that stop you from spreading liberty. Our next plan: grab our own table and set-up anyways.

You might forget something.

Another member of the group headed to our campus storage space to fetch our table while I hauled our recruitment materials to an empty space in the midst of the other organizations. Unfortunately, my teammate came back with bad news. The table had been left at one of our houses. And with no car and no way to get to the house in a timely manner, we were yet again out of luck.

At this point, I was more than ready to spread out our tablecloth on the grass and set up anyways on the ground. Luckily, the woman at check-in was kind enough to give us an extra table that was never claimed by another group. So, with a space finally secured, we were quick to set up our table and begin recruiting! We got lucky getting an open space, but the important part is this: don’t give up if you don’t have a space or if the university isn’t “letting” you table. And if you forget any of your materials like we did, continue recruiting anyways! The table and the materials don’t get recruits— you do!

Don’t hesitate to ask for help.

After getting steady interest from students, I began to notice that our table wasn’t holding up. Our signs weren’t staying up and our banner was starting to slump on one side. The adhesives we were using weren’t holding up due to the high heat and humidity. We didn’t have any heavy-duty tape on us so we asked someone from a neighboring table if we could borrow theirs. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help.There are a large amount of other student groups surrounding you who wouldn’t mind lending a hand if needed. Use the opportunity to tell them how great liberty is!

Prepare for Hell

Not literally. But it can get pretty hot outside, and preparing for the weather is important. It was over 90 degrees and very humid during our tabling time. I dressed for the weather but made the mistake of not getting hydrated beforehand. The university provided us with cold water and ice, but it ran out quickly. If you want to look your best and do your best recruiting, you need to be weather-ready! Check the weather forecast in advance to plan accordingly. If it’s going to be hot and sunny out like it was for us, bring sunscreen and make sure to hydrate! Also, use the weather to your advantage! For example, bring water bottles to hand out to students if you know it will be hot out. If you forget to hydrate yourself like I did, don’t hesitate to put your table on hold for a minute, or let your teammates take over while you go get water and a snack. Your health is priority.

Recruiting for liberty usually isn’t a tough thing to do, but sometimes things can and will go wrong. It happens to the best of us so it’s important to prepare ahead of time and be quick to act when something doesn’t go as planned. Despite all that went wrong, in the end we were successful! We had an awesome set up, gave away lots of liberty swag, got a ton of students to play “liberty pong” with us, and got over 70 new sign-ups. Liberty for the win!

 

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