Despite its rap for being an island of blue in a sea of heartland red, Kansas University is a place where conservative students not only survive, but thrive, according to a conservative college guide book.

“I don’t think it’s that surprising,” Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway said. “KU is a place where there’s room for a wide variety of political and social views.”

According to “Choosing the Right College 2006: The Whole Truth about America’s Top Schools,” a guide book for conservatives, Kansas University offers one of the best state-school educations in the nation.

The guide is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ISI’s chairman is Edwin Feulner, whom President Ronald Reagan once called “a leader of the conservative movement,” according to ISI’s Web site.

KU is listed among Baylor, Texas, and Texas A&M universities in the book.

The book cites the beauty of the campus, relatively low crime, relatively low tuition, and KU’s atmosphere that allows room for dissent and complex thinking. It also notes that KU is one of the few state universities with a chapel on its campus.

Hemenway said the recognition may partly be due to the fact that KU has maintained its Western Civilization requirements – a move that conservatives find praiseworthy.

Isn’t the campus known to be a bastion of liberalism?

• Intercollegiate Studies Institute college guide
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“I think it’s very hard to label the campus,” Hemenway said. “You’ve got almost 30,000 students and they represent a variety of views.”

Karen Bentley, president of KU College Republicans, said she’s more conservative than the traditional student on campus, and that hasn’t been a problem.

“I’ve never had a professor who said I couldn’t talk,” she said.

And students on both sides of the political spectrum often get along fine, said Marc Langston, head of KU Young Democrats.

“We’re having a dodgeball tournament with the College Republicans next Tuesday,” he said.

Justin O’Neal, a KU student and member of College Republicans, said he found a welcoming environment at KU.

“There are very few times that I’ve been disrespected for saying: ‘Hey, I’m a conservative,'” O’Neal said.

State Rep. Paul Davis, D-Lawrence and a KU alumnus, said that as a student he thought KU was “always a place where different views were welcome whether liberal or conservative.”

Davis said KU was perceived as a liberal bastion by some, but he never believed that was true.

As far as KU going out of its way to publicize the fact that a conservative group praised the school, Davis said, “the university ought to want to attract quality students no matter what their political views are.”

The guide’s creators gather information from surveys of students and faculty who subscribe to ISI’s educational materials.

John Zmirak, the editor of the guide, said he believed KU has been included in the guide since it began in 1994.

If students reported being persecuted for expressing their views, they might not be featured in the book, Zmirak said.

The Princeton Review has a top-20 list of schools whose students are “Most Nostalgic For Reagan.” KU isn’t on it. But it’s not on the list for “Students Most Nostalgic for Bill Clinton” either.