About

During the Fall 2007 semester, a group of conservative and libertarian students met informally to address the underrepresentation of voices which advocate traditional American values, limited government, civic duty, and responsible national fiscal policy in Belmont University‘s school-funded student newspaper of record, The Vision. We also found ourselves united in opposition to the overwhelming pervasiveness of blatant left-leaning social justice messages masked as “Christian Faith Development” and espoused by guest speakers in the school’s compulsory Convocation Lecture series and in other campus events. Engaged and interested in politics, and motivated to reach out to other conservatives on campus and in the surrounding community who had no official media presence or mouthpiece, we resolved to found a student-owned and operated nonprofit “right-of-center” publication.

Rather than focusing our journalistic proclivities on the minutia of dormitory life or the dregs of the cafeteria line, we purpose ourselves to tackle stories of political, economic, and social interest from an ideological perspective not manifestly evident in mainstream media, and which was evidently lacking in our campus newspaper, The Vision. We aim to provide students and faculty alike with a forum for substantive dialogue on a range of university, municipal, State, and Federal issues; we strive to provide the community with a service it desperately needs. We named our publication the Right Aisle Review, and our mission statement provides our organization with a clear purpose:

“To provide a reliable conservative and libertarian channel for students at Belmont University which explores new ground by promoting a clash on issues important to our community.”

Belmont University rests at the center of a political and cultural Mecca of the South, in Nashville, TN. Belmont students account for approximately one percent of Nashville’s population; more than 200 full-time professors complement the Belmont student body. While traditionally renowned as “Music City, USA,” healthcare accounts for most of Nashville’s output, in addition to some manufacturing and agriculture in the surrounding area; as more and more industries choose to relocate their corporate headquarters to the middle Tennessee region, educational and professional opportunities in both business and political contexts will flourish for Belmont’s students. As the Tennessee’s capital city, Nashville’s vibrant political landscape provides numerous untapped avenues and channels for advancing conservative and libertarian values. As such, members of the Belmont community – part of the larger organism called Nashville – benefit from each issue of the Right Aisle Review.

In addition to representing a unique ideological perspective on campus, our newspaper offers a real-world experiential forum for future policy analysts, business leaders, journalists, legislators and engaged citizens. Service with the Right Aisle Review will expose students to the challenges and subsequent rewards of human capital planning, human resource management, technical and editorial writing, political organization, dialogue, and engagement, civic engagement and community service, interaction with the University’s administration, coalition building, project-based creative functions, and goal-setting, tasking, and performance assessment by committee. We believe that these opportunities will supplement classroom learning in a manner that will provide our graduating upperclassmen with invaluable background experience in a variety of fields as they begin their transitions from life at Belmont University into their respective career choices.

We thank you in advance for visiting our site, we welcome your comments and dissent, and we hope you enjoy our material!

– The Editorial and Faculty Advisory Boards of the Right Aisle Review