A TU student left school for the semester to volunteer on Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. TU sophomore Mary Brown is an English and political science major who hopes to go to law school. I reached out to Brown to find out what it’s like to be a college-age student working in politics.
Brown told me she took the semester off because she is “extremely impulsive.” “Ted Cruz rocks,” she shared, “Ted and his family are really amazing people.”
Brown said she really looks up to the way that Cruz has stood up to Washington in the past. Her mom’s friend is a friend of Cruz’s, and Brown told me she’s the one who made the argument for Brown to drop out to help with the campaign. “Because I am a few semesters ahead and would have otherwise had a blank semester before law school started, I went ahead and dropped out of of college,” she said. “I got my foot in the door now too so that’s pretty neat.”
She said she was first sent to New Hampshire to help get the vote for the primary. There she helped with the town halls and rallies Cruz held, and spoke to voters to inform them on Cruz’s policies. Then, she said, she went to South Carolina. “I worked from their headquarters doing a lot of volunteer bookings and computer projects that would probably make my job sound rather boring but it’s really not.” She’s now at the national headquarters in Houston, Texas, where she’s originally from. There she’s working on getting ready for the Kansas caucus, and placing sergeant speakers at as many caucus locations as possible.
“Working on a campaign is an amazing experience,” Brown told me. “The people I work with are really neat, welcoming, experienced and intelligent.” “Although it can be hard and mentally draining at some points, I have learned more in the past few weeks than I have in my past three semesters at TU. It’s unfortunate one costs $100,000 and the other one does not.”
Brown, who said she sees herself having a future in politics, recommends everyone should drop out of college once “if granted an alternative opportunity to receive hands-on experience.”
“Many of my co-workers are receiving college credit from their universities while working on the campaign,” she said, adding that she thinks it would be beneficial for more universities to have such programs.
