THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1994 TAG: 9409200107
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REALPOLITIK
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
WHAT IN THE world is happening on college campuses these days?
The students seem to care.
Earlier this month, we met an army of undergraduate penny loafers marching in lock step for Ollie North at Hampden-Sydney. A chilling sight.
Then last Friday, we drove more than 100 miles to watch the Clean Up Congress kids open a new office in Richmond. These are students who hate Oliver North.
At first we thought, aha, protesters. College students showing signs of latent liberalism.
Their sole purpose is to keep Ollie out of the Senate. Clean Up Congress doesn't care if Roseanne Barr is our next senator as long as North is not.
They've plastered the walls of their office with bumper stickers: ``I Don't Vote for Felons,'' ``North? Never'' and crude drawings of a lascivious Ollie North sitting atop a bag of money.
We expected to find college students with chips on their shoulders the size of term papers. We expected tie-dyes and poor personal hygiene. We expected a mob bent on dragging Oliver North kicking and screaming from the state.
Instead, we found about a dozen polite, well-groomed students. Even their toenails - visible through their Birkenstocks - seemed clean. They weren't carrying picket signs or Molotov cocktails. They were armed instead with reprints from Reader's Digest.
``We want to send Oliver North a message: Virginia is not for sale,'' declared Kelly Jones, a University of Virginia student on sabbatical until after the election. ``He's trying to buy himself this state.
``He can try this somewhere else.''
As hard as she tries, Jones, who heads the CUC's Richmond office, doesn't look the part of a student activist. She's cute. Sunny disposition. Even when she's angry, this 19-year-old can't help flashing her Pepsodent smile.
She threatens to leave the state if Ollie North becomes Sen. Ollie.
``It would be too humiliating,'' she says.
But did she leave the country when Ronald Reagan was elected?
``I was really too young,'' she says, smiling indulgently.
Clean Up Congress was founded in 1990 by Woody Holton (son of former Gov. Linwood Holton, who has endorsed Marshall Coleman) and several others who wanted to help elect pro-environmental senators and congressmen. They take partial credit for almost whupping Newt Gingrich last year in his primary, in which he eked out a victory by fewer than 1,000 votes.
``We're not endorsing anyone, we're not affiliated with any campaign,'' Holton says.
Clean Up Congress' anti-Ollie movement began in June 1993 when that well-known liberal rag Reader's Digest printed a story titled ``Does Oliver North Tell the Truth?'' No, the author said, he's a liar.
Clean up Congress obtained about 300,000 copies of the story. The young people's goal is to hand-deliver copies to as many Virginia voters as possible before Nov. 8.
During the summer, a small army of college students knocked on doors all over Northern Virginia.
``If you live in Northern Virginia and you're not in an apartment building with a locked lobby, you probably got a Reader's Digest story from us,'' boasts Woody Holton. ``We didn't miss many dwellings.''
With the opening of the Richmond office, Clean Up Congress has established a network of college volunteers bombarding shopping malls and other public places with the Reader's Digest story.
They claim that college students - other than those at Hampden-Sydney - are jumping at the chance to campaign against North.
``At Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, we had 70 people show up for our first meeting,'' says Jones. ``That's out of a student body of about 700.''
One thing seems to be making these college students nervous: Doug Wilder's disappearance from the race. If Coleman follows suit, they fear they will be left campaigning for Robb - another candidate with a dubious record on telling the truth.
``I hope it doesn't come to that,'' says Jones.
Other students put a different spin on it.
``There really are no parallels between Chuck Robb and Ollie North,'' argues Derek Miller of Virginia Beach, a College of William and Mary sophomore who is working for Clean Up Congress and says he is a Republican. ``Robb has acknowledged lying and apologized for it. He also has a record in the Senate. North has nothing but Iran-Contra and his lies.''
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES by CNB