Being a Wesleyan student and a political activist has always gone hand-in-hand. For a left-leaning campus like the University, senior Bradley Spahn’s position as president of College Democrats of Connecticut comes as hardly a surprise. However, the University is also home to Chairman of the Connecticut Union of College Republicans Alex Mac Levin ’12. Though at seeming political odds, the two both help shape the campus’s political activism on the state level and have done so since the beginning of their careers at Wesleyan.

“Before I got to Wesleyan, a friend of mine from high school who was also going here was interning for the Obama campaign,” Spahn said. “The campaign was closely managing student groups all over the country. They initially plugged him in to be in charge of Wesleyan, but there was a vacancy at the state level, so he asked me to take over at Wesleyan so he could fill the state position. So I was literally in charge of Wesleyan Students for Barack Obama before I had ever stepped foot on campus.”

Levin’s political career similarly started early.

“I’ve been involved in politics my whole life,” Levin said. “My dad was the president of our local neighborhood area when I was younger, and I would always help him out at his campaign stops and go along to the town council meetings. But what really got me excited about the political scene was the 2008 presidential election. As a freshman, I was pretty committed to getting McCain elected and I joined the College Republicans chapter here at Wesleyan. Eugene Wong [’09], who was the president of the chapter at the time, took me under his wing, made me an officer of the club, and the rest is history.”

The College Democrats of Connecticut and the Connecticut Union of College Republicans are both committed to supporting local candidates for their respective political parties, but the groups also seek to encourage college and university students to become involved in politics. Still Spahn and Levin had widely different reasons for attending the University.

“I had family connections here,” Levin said. “My uncle went here in the seventies and my dad grew up only half an hour away. I love the campus and I love the school and got asked to play on the golf team, something I’ve actually had to stop because of all the political things I’ve been up to for the past year or two.”

“I liked Wesleyan better than Northwestern,” Spahn said, with a laugh. “I basically came here for the College of Social Studies.”

When asked about the political participation among Wesleyan students, both Chairman Levin and the President Spahn agreed that it was not always as smooth as they might like.

“The political participation during the Obama campaign was unbelievable,” Spahn said. “By the time the general election came around, volunteers were coming out of the woodwork. We probably had 100 people working for the campaign the weekend before Election Day. Since then, it has been a lot harder to get volunteers. During WesDems meetings immediately after the 2008 elections, sometimes it was only my close friends and myself—they took pity on me because they knew no one else was coming. I think a lot of the reason political participation is so low in between elections is because Wesleyan is such an activist community, but also because people just are not paying the same kind of attention.”

Levin and the campus Republicans have experienced an entirely different set of issues.

“I would characterize Wesleyan as very liberal,” Levin said. “It’s changing, and I feel for the better—and by better I don’t necessarily mean that there are more conservatives at the school, but that the atmosphere for conservatives is becoming slightly better.”

As for their actions on the state level, both Spahn and Levin’s organizations have encountered very different results. This past election season in particular has spurred both political parties to rethink how best to direct their efforts, and, as a result, so have their collegiate counterparts.

“From a Republican standpoint, Connecticut is a mess,” Levin said. “Basically it’s a Democratically controlled state legislature, with no major Republican officeholders in the state right now, which I think is pretty scary. I’ve been saying to people that, right now, I think Connecticut is the most liberal state in the country.”

Yet, even in blue Connecticut, Spahn attests to difficulties transforming the state’s liberal atmosphere into widespread political activism amongst students.

“Statewide, student participation in the 2010 election was way down from 2008, unsurprisingly,” Spahn said. “Yale and Wesleyan turn out volunteers, but it’s hard to get people to turn out anywhere else.”

As for the future of both organizations, the key goals for both parties are about the same: get people registered and involved, and get their candidates elected to office.

“I don’t want to say it’s the top goal, but getting our candidates elected is definitely up there,” Levin said. “We also have an issue advocacy platform, where, in addition to helping get Republicans active, we want to make sure that college students all across Connecticut are educated and informed about conservative viewpoints. A lot of times at college campuses, not just at Wesleyan and not just in Connecticut either, students are only exposed to one viewpoint, and it’s our goal to try and get our message and our standpoint about what’s going on in the world today out there.”

“We just elected new leadership for WesDems last week, and I feel very good about that moving forward,” Spahn said. “State-wide, my issue is voter registration, and frankly that was disappointing. It was down across Connecticut, and no one really did a good job of registering students to vote. Wesleyan was pretty disappointing, because most of the students were registered to vote before the 2008 election, so only 150 new registrants showed up last year. Voter registration is also really low in places like the University of Connecticut, where most students are from Conn., so nationwide there’s a huge student voter registration deficit, and I think as student leaders we have to solve that problem.”

But the burning question still remains: can the leaders of these sworn enemies coexist peacefully?

“I’ve met Alex, and I have no qualms about him,” Spahn said. “I know a lot of Republicans through the debate team and CSS, and although I disagree with them substantively, I think they’re great people.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say he’s my sworn enemy,” Levin said. “To be honest, I think I’ve only had one conversation with him. It’s nearly a year I’ve been in this office, and I haven’t heard much from the state college Democrats. For us, this last year has been unbelievably great for growth, even if the state party ended up losing across the spectrum. But that wasn’t because they were lacking college Republican support.”

So, no chance of a cage match anytime soon?

“It seems unlikely,” Spahn said, laughing. “I’m also pretty sure Alex would win.”