In the Feb 28 issue of

The Spectator

, Eric Kopp ’22 wrote an article commenting on the dishonest nature of the No Labels national organization and advised students to be aware of its values before joining the on-campus club: No Labels Hamilton College.

I started this club at Hamilton with the intention of bringing meaningful bipartisan discourse to our campus. I first heard of No Labels through a friend at George Washington University, who is co-president of their No Labels chapter. I spoke to her about their club’s work, attended a few events, and gradually grew to admire the bridge-building, inclusive nature of the organization.

As I was creating the vision for the club at Hamilton, I remembered No Labels. It seemed to me an effective way to bring together varying political voices here at Hamilton. I spoke with the deputy director of No Labels, who sent me information on the organization’s mission and materials for starting a chapter at the collegiate level. According to one of the documents, No Labels “believes that common sense solutions exist for our national challenges. We believe our country needs an agenda to set us on the right path. And we believe that our government should be capable of setting and meeting these goals.”

As a club dedicated to promoting meaningful discussion, we hope that by engaging with various political viewpoints, we can bridge the ideological divide. But as Kopp pointed out, the national organization — as admirable as its mission is — has fallen short over time. This has been amplified by the organization’s promotion of special interests in the House and outspoken opposition for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s legislative agenda.

Upon conducting further research, we have decided that we do not support No Labels at a national level. To reflect this change, we have decided to rename our organization “Bridge.” This new name represents our mission to bridge together varying perspectives and various communities.

We still support the original goals of No Labels, grounded in its mission to combat partisan dysfunction in politics and “usher in a new era of focused problem solving in American politics.”

As declared in our mission statement, No Labels Hamilton College — now Bridge — will seek to provide a bipartisan discussion space on campus meant to bring a multitude of political views together for meaningful policy-based conversation.

Our club aims to bring people together to start talking about our nation’s political problems, as well as what those issues mean for our campus, and what we — as college students — can do to begin addressing them.

This starts with the desire to understand how different political viewpoints are formed, and how we can move towards engaging in respectful debate focusing on the content of an argument, and not relying on ad-hominem attacks. Our club will not expect members to identify as moderates or independents, and encourages students of all political persuasions to attend.

Our first interest meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 8 at 7 PM. Further details will be e-mailed after spring break. We hope to see you there!