The Caucuses

Caucuses (or parties) serve as a defining part of the Union. Each one has unique political differences that bring like-minded people together to discuss and present arguments and perspectives at our meetings and debates. They are also an essential way for members to engage in social events and build bonds with other members of the Union.


  • As the largest and most diverse party, the Great Society is the foremost association of liberal thought in the Union. The members of the Great Society of the Cornell Political Union, believe that the ideals upon which this nation was founded were unlike any that had been proposed beforehand for their content. We believe that simply because this system of government was the first of its kind, this does not mean it is warranted to blindly cling to the traditions and ways of thinking which were sufficient to found. We do not take the revelation of what should be this self-evident truth as a rebuke or rejection of everything the United States has professed to stand for, nor as an admittance that the experiment has failed. Instead, we take this as a call to improve the nation in the exact way that it, as a nation of ideals and not of blood and soil, was intended to be changed, and has been changed - in the same ways that we now advocate, for its betterment and better fulfillment of its founding notions.

  • The Independents Caucus is the Cornell Political Union’s youngest and rapidly growing caucus. Birthed out of frustration with growing tribalism and partisan politics, the Independents believe that progress is possible through discourse in an effort to find the middle ground. The Independents Caucus was made in an attempt to bring down the binary structure of liberal and conservative where it exists within the Political Union. We are a group for those who don’t fit neatly into the rooted bins of left and right. And while we believe that the political left and the political right have added great value to our political discussions, neither has a monopoly on understanding the world or how to improve it. We are a group of young students from all around the country and with diverse political ideologies but with a deep-set passion for understanding and valuing the middle ground.


  • The Freedom Caucus is one of the Cornell Political Union's founding societies and its foremost association of conservative members. Although its membership is not confined to a specific tradition on the Right, it is committed to the essential values of constitutional democracy, limited government, rigorous debate, and the Western philosophical tradition. The Caucus is defined by its contradictions: it is at once populist but scholarly, conservative but stylistically ostentatious, and lighthearted but determined in its mission. At a time of intense political skepticism, the Freedom Caucus stands sincere in its sense of citizenship to the American political project.