Usually these kind of meetings are held in dark, back rooms, the air heavy with the smell of cigar smoke. The table between the four participants of the clandestine meeting littered with expensive whiskey on the rocks.

Speaking in hushed tones, they hold their cigars that are imprinted with a golden dollar sign and absent-mindedly play with their cuff links while they discuss the fate of the world.

Unfortunately, not this time. When I met with what was left of my old College Libertarians group, the surroundings were not like this at all. Instead of meeting as powerful investors, we met to decide how to rescue our beloved group.

While our meetings had never been crowded, we had kept a sizable amount of members during the fall semester of 2007. This number waned in the spring of 2008 and came crashing down in the fall while I was interning in Columbus. Several of our members had also transferred and graduated, leaving only a few to carry on our discussions.

Last Tuesday we met to decide, “Where do we go now?” While there were several things to be addressed, our group had already decided on one important factor – the group must be reinvented.

The founder of our group, an incredibly intelligent philosophy graduate student, had finished his program at Kent State and had gone on in search of greener pastures. Our president had always wanted the group to be more of a discussion than what the Republican and Democrat groups are on campus. This was a good idea to an extent, but it turned out not to be very practical when it came to retaining members.

Starting at 8:30 p.m. next Wednesday, we will host the first meeting of the revamped, rewired and brand new campus Libertarian group.

Largely missing will be the discussions of Austrian economics, how to implement anti-authoritarian policies and getting out the vote for Ron Paul – which we have obviously hit a dead end on. Gone also will be the drunken debauchery. That, I think, will remain quite missed.

Instead of meeting in smoke-filled rooms like power-hungry schemers, we plan on taking the group to the next level – bringing it out into the light. Gone will be the boys and girls club that ventured into the Ratt after every meeting to start arguments with the socialists.

Our crowd will instead be showing movies, bringing in speakers and doing our damnedest to inform the student body of our ideas on liberty and freedom.

Hopefully after this semester, those of us graduating will leave behind a fully functional group – one that goes beyond the partisan line of the current political system. This will be our legacy and our gift to the Kent State students who feel out of place in the pro-war Democratic and Republican parties.

Ted Hamilton is a senior magazine journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].