Florida Gulf Coast University’s registered student organization, Eagles for Liberty, aims to provide students interested in topics on liberty and freedom an opportunity to discuss their viewpoints with other students at the university.
For the president of Eagles for Liberty, Chris Longfield-Smith, the organization not only allowed him to discuss topics that intrigued him, but also helped him get more involved with the community.
“Like many people, I was just sucking down these ideas by myself,” said Longfield-Smith, a  fifth-year senior majoring in economics. “I thought that it would be better to do that in a group, for an exchange of ideas. There was a huge amount that I didn’t fully understand but the amount of connections the club has with the local community and national organizations provides lots of opportunities for careers and lots of growth.”
The organization has guest speakers, presentations, and group discussions. They have meetings on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month and in October, they will be going to the Students for Liberty regional conference in Gainesville.
“I think that students should do a number of things in college,” said Bradley Hobbs, advisor of Eagles for Liberty. “One is learn and be subjected to intellectual rigor, but the other thing that they should do is question what they already believe and question what they hear.”
According to Hobbs, Eagles for Liberty focuses most of its discussions on liberty and freedom ideas. Last year, they covered topics ranging from property rights and children to economic freedom and action.
“In an economic sense, you are kind of supplying a demand,” Longfield-Smith said. “There is a high demand for people to voluntarily get together and talk about these things.”
The organization wants the ideas they discuss to reach as many people as possible. The only way to do that is to make people aware of how important these topics are.
“It is really easy to take the elements in which we are interested in for granted,” Longfield-Smith said. “It is really easy to not even know about or intuitively understand but discount and forget the importance of the underlying principles we are interested in, philosophic and economic ideas. You need a club to get that across to people.”
Along with raising awareness of these issues, Emily Reynolds, a junior majoring in economics and vice president of the organization, wants more students to join their organization.
“We want to expand membership in numbers but also want to increase variety,” Reynolds said. “We want to see people come out from very different majors to increase membership.”
The organization’s meetings are held the second and fourth Thursdays each month in Lutgert Hall, Room 1205 at 6:30 p.m. Students can email the officers at [email protected] or find Eagles for Liberty (E4L) on Facebook to learn more about the group.