Marginalized College Republicans Speak Out

43 thoughts on Marginalized College Republicans Speak Out

1. I do love how no one ever lets them get a word in edgewise, and clearly they’re so, so oppressed!

   Incidentally, this piece manages to hit on one of my least favorite trends in higher education: I’m paying all this money and this is what I get!? crap. Shockingly, your tuition does not permit you to run your mouth at every possible opportunity.

2. Someone call this loser a WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHmbulance.

3. Don’t cry emo boy.

4. This clip was hilarious! Especially the 1st clip, with the young woman who was surprised to find that Fox News wasn’t a valid news source. The 2nd woman, from Atlanta, may have had a valid point with her professor telling her he was surprised she was able to “put her shoes on” and come to NYU. Everything else she said I completely disagreed with, but I faced a lot of classism when I entered college. I think that the classism I faced caused me to hold on to my conservative beliefs for longer that I would have under other circumstances. I hate to play into the idea of an “academic elite” but I felt intimidated and put off by my well-to-do professors and classmates, and a comment like that, sadly, might have caused me to end up being conservative for a year or two longer. which, of course, would have been tragic.

5. Oh, those poor oppressed Republicans.

   It reminds me of the people who said they weren’t allowed to express their opinions on how they hated homosexuals.

   I went to a conservative school in the South for a little while, and as a feminist, left-wing, first-generation immigrant Canadian who’s spent time in the Middle East and Pakistan, I may very well have been one of the most liberal people on that whole campus. Can I go on CNN with you, Jill? I wasn’t even very far from their headquarters.

6. OH MY GOD THAT BOY IS SO TOOLTASTIC.

   Also, the professors in the first two situations do sound kind of assholish.

   And, a senior in my linguistics class (head of Students Right to Life, writer for the conservative publication) after I made a disparaging remark about Fox News said it was just as valid a news source as CNN. I kind of wanted to be in her head when our TF, while explaining ancient Celtic cultures, told us that Christmas was a pagan holiday originally (he himself being a Christian. and very cool).

7. If the events the students recounted actually happened in the way that they claim, then the professors are obviously out of line. I don’t think that these kids are lying exactly, but I have a funny feeling that their versions of the stories probably don’t square with how most other people in the room interpreted the events. That is, I’d imagine that the stories are a bit exaggerated, and the actual events twisted to suit these students’ victim complexes.

   I’m going to try and write a little bit more about this tomorrow, but what I think this whole “conservative oppression on campus” thing comes down to is the fact that a whole lot of conservative thought is anti-intellectual (see: climate change, evolution, etc). It’s narrow by definition, and often lacking intellectual curiosity. That isn’t to say that conservatives are stupid (they aren’t), or that there isn’t a particular breed of conservatism that is quite intellectual, and lends itself particularly well to academia (there is, and I would argue that it is represented). But the mainstream American George-Bush-loving conservatism isn’t readily represented in academia for a pretty good reason.

8. I agree about the “conservative oppression”, Jill. I recall students like that at Albertson College of Idaho (Idaho’s liberal arts institution). We’d always get one or two of the Limbaugh-loving republican kids on the debate team. Their high school mindset, or anti-intellectualism, did not last long, usually. Once they got pwned in a collegiate debate tournament or in a classroom, they’d start reviewing their beliefs, assumptions, etc. Many decided that they were libertarians or something after a few semesters. But those who wanted to play the victim Republican were just dying for some affront so they could brag about it. They ignored the fact that the profs were just as hard on “liberal” students. I think the worst ones, though, were the males who took classes from academically rigorous female profs and went in with big chips on their shoulders. They expected the profs to hate them because they were male, or blamed their poor marks on the prof’s “hate” of their male-ness. Nevermind the fact that they acted like immature brats with a set of preconceptions that were academically unhealthy. Those were my least favorite fellow students.

9. I object to the implication that CNN is the liberal Fox News. Even Air America Radio isn’t the liberal Fox News. Maybe the Mike Molloy Show was the liberal Fox Neews — which would be why AAR dropped it.

10. It’s always really bugged me when professors have taken my class time to interject their own political opinions to a captive audience. Especially when it’s just a science or language class and the topics we’re discussing have nothing to do with politics. It alienates students with opposing views (conservative or liberal).

    I was in a class once where the professor took the last few minutes to talk about Bush, and one guy who didn’t express an extreme hatred got screamed at by another girl. I’m not saying that I don’t disagree with Bush, but honestly you can’t have a debate when one party is screaming at you. That was just a bit disrespectful.

    I am from the South, going to school in MA, and while I really like it and my beliefs have become decidedly more liberal, I did find it annoying at first when people would express their ignorant views on the South to me. Like “Hyuk hyuk, are ya’ll inbred?” or “I heard Southernors have IQ’s 50 points below Northernors.” Those were just dumb students. If any of my professors would’ve done that, I would have been humiliated.

11. Is it just me, or do College Republicans everywhere look and talk the same? I thought there would be some variation, but I guess not. . .

12. I object to the implication that CNN is the liberal Fox News. Even Air America Radio isn’t the liberal Fox News. Maybe the Mike Molloy Show was the liberal Fox Neews — which would be why AAR dropped it.

    That’s not what I meant. I just meant that CNN is TV.

13. If the events the students recounted actually happened in the way that they claim, then the professors are obviously out of line. I don’t think that these kids are lying exactly, but I have a funny feeling that their versions of the stories probably don’t square with how most other people in the room interpreted the events. That is, I’d imagine that the stories are a bit exaggerated, and the actual events twisted to suit these students’ victim complexes.

    That’s what’s happened with most of the stories of conservative oppression that David Horowitz has pushed.

    I really have to wonder what it is with kids today. Unless I just went to the most apathetic university ever (quite likely, given how my advisor used to complain that nobody came to see him for anything other than having their schedules signed off on). But even in law school, the Federalist Society types (and I was friends with a few of them) didn’t bitch and moan about liberal bias in the classroom or unfair treatment.

    In fact, the only person I can remember complaining about unfair treatment in the classroom based on ideology was me, in my AIDS and the Law seminar. The professor was one of those types ready to explain all human behavior by the latest pop psychology fad (he also taught family law). I found him merely annoying, but the class fascinating, until one day at the end of the semester when he had us do a role-play. We were to be members of ACT UP planning a protest against the Catholic Church for its position on AIDS. It fairly quickly devolved into bashing Catholics as a bunch of superstitious weirdoes, and he not only didn’t put a stop to that, he participated with a crack about the use of wine in the Mass (implication: they’re all a bunch of drunks anyway).

    Mind you, there were a number of us in that class who were Catholic, some who were pretty devout and some, like me, who were long since lapsed but knew a slam against our people when we heard it (does anyone crawl up the ass of Italian Catholics for drinking wine during Communion? Nope. That’s for the Irish).

    But, you know, we didn’t run crying to the administration or the media over it. We spoke up in class and then, when we weren’t satisfied with the response we got then, we sent emails to the professor explaining why we were angry (ethnic slurs, failure to distinguish between Church policy and individual Catholics, doesn’t really help your cause of nondiscrimination when you’re indulging in bigotry yourself, what the fuck were you doing participating anyway), and we hashed it out with him. He then hashed it out with the entire class the next time we met. Done, and done.

14. I actually was a member of the NYU College Republicans my freshman year back in (gasp!) ’83, but don’t remember feeling ‘oppressed’ or any professors trying to change people’s beliefs. NYU was more apathetic than anything else. Since then I’ve changed my political views a lot. 🙂 I remember one of my politics professors was an avowed Marxist, so I just made sure when it was time for my final paper in political philosophy, I praised Marx. It worked, got an A.

15. These folks view any interruption of their privilege as “oppression.”

    They wouldn ‘t last five minutes in our shoes.

16. This can all go back to fundamentally flawed logic, e.g. I had a shitty professor, that professor espoused liberal beliefs, therefore all liberal professors are shitty. It doesn’t work like that.

    When hearing stories like this I always think back to two professors I had in college, both liberal. One was a sociology professor who often went off about how conservative policy was bad. He was a sucky teacher because he presented his views as fact and didn’t allow for any intellectual debate.

    The other was a poli sci professor who was unabashedly liberal and even sometimes appears in the media as a democratic pundit. But used these views as jumping off points for actual intellectual discussions and people actually learned. Because of this, he was the favorite of even the most Republican students.

    By limiting what professors can say, you stifle both the good ones and the bad ones.

17. The Smith Republicans pull this kind of thing all.the.time. They tend to whinge about their marginalised views in the student press. And admittedly there is professorial bias, but not in a ridiculous manner–this is a liberal arts college for women, after all, history classes are going to focus on those who didn’t have agency, and the conservatives then definitely did bad shit to them. So we’re naturally not going to be thrilled with the conservatives in class.

    This was going somewhere, but instead it just makes me tired.

18. I think Timothy Burke really hits the nail on the head on this topic here, when he says the problem is really just a subset of the more general problem of *bad teaching*. The unfortunate truth is that many large research universities don’t particularly prioritize or incentivize good teaching. And one upshot of this is that, because most professors really are quite a bit more liberal, or at least less traditionalist-conservative, than their students, one way ‘bad teaching’ will occasionally manifest itself is in professors doing things like the ones described in the video. But that doesn’t mean the way to fix things is to start a witch-hunt, or even to explicitly target politicization–which can, if done *well*, even be pedagogically useful. It just means that departments and universities ought to be more aggressive about discouraging bad teaching, in all its forms.

19. Hmm, I’m not sure. I was witness to a couple of similar events in my (largely liberal) university and while no one else seemed to take much notice, it got to me because I’d had similar experiences in high school and at A-level(16-18). In other words, while the individual acts may not have added up to much, there are subtle forms of bullying that lecturers/seminar leaders sometimes conciously use to isolate students by getting the rest of the class to round on them.

    Of course I’m not talking about people who express bigoted opinions or ones that don’t make sense. The stuff I’m refrerring to is when students posit arguments against particular profs’ ideas, either in regard to the course or real life, and find themselves aggressively patronized in class or punished for it when they get their essays back.

20. Hell, not only were Republicans vastly outnumbered by Democrats at my alma mater, but I’m sure there were more socialists and anarchists than them too. I never witnessed any marginalization of conservative students by professors. However, I do remember an article in the student paper that was about Republican students feeling like they were outcasts. What I remember most about the article is that all of the students who were interviewed apparently felt so ostracized that none of them wanted their names to appear in print. All of the quotes were from anonymous Republican students. Maybe I’m mean, but I found that pretty funny at the time.

21. The Smith Republicans pull this kind of thing all.the.time. They tend to whinge about their marginalised views in the student press. And admittedly there is professorial bias, but not in a ridiculous manner–this is a liberal arts college for women, after all, history classes are going to focus on those who didn’t have agency, and the conservatives then definitely did bad shit to them. So we’re naturally not going to be thrilled with the conservatives in class.

    from Rhi

    It ain’t changed. They started their own newspaper this year to whine about their oppression as bigoted straight white rich girls. I believe it was called “The Right View”. Snark snark. They started a huge campus controversy along race/class lines with their startingly ignorant epistle about affirmative action (which I think was probably a good thing, the issues of race and class definitely need to be addressed here). Also contained was a whiny little piece about a poor oppressed, unaccepted conservative who wanted to return to “third grade, where your science text book told you there were two genders and they dated each other, and there were no girls calling themselves boys” (I’m parahrasing). It’s funny how they are always wanting tolerance, and in the same breath, are spewing incredibly intolerant bull. It goes both ways, gals.

22. Also contained was a whiny little piece about a poor oppressed, unaccepted conservative who wanted to return to “third grade, where your science text book told you there were two genders and they dated each other, and there were no girls calling themselves boys”

    I guess she missed the Times article on gender variant children Jill put up. Where will she go now?!

23. I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and I always got the feeling that conservative students relished their role as political martyrs. They seemed very enamoured of the idea that they were speaking truth to power. And what better place to do so than the quintessential bastion of liberal politics, Berkeley?

    Never mind that College Republicans is the largest student group on campus.

24. Also contained was a whiny little piece about a poor oppressed, unaccepted conservative who wanted to return to “third grade, where your science text book told you there were two genders and they dated each other, and there were no girls calling themselves boys”

    This makes me think of the theme song to All In The Family.

25. I grew up in Indiana, a very red state. I grew up a Democrat, and my entire life I had to justify my beliefs–I had to think about my politics b/c I wasn’t in the majority.

    When I went to college, suddenly the world was full of people who agreed with me. It was really cool. Then during the Bush/Dukakis election, we had Midwestern frosh whining about how they felt marginalized. Everyone didn’t agree with them, and they didn’t like it.

    GROW UP, you whiny babies. Just b/c your opinion is different doesn’t make you wrong. If you can’t stand up for your beliefs if everyone around you doesn’t agree, then you really don’t have much of a belief at all, do you?

    Except of entitlement. And the world doesn’t have to cater to you. And that failure to cater to your whims and coddle you is NOT oppression.

26. I always got the feeling that conservative students relished their role as political martyrs. They seemed very enamoured of the idea that they were speaking truth to power.

    No other college-age, politically active youths share this mindset.

27. I think the fact that Fox News is airing this fluff piece in indication enough that Fox News is not a valid news source.

28. No other college-age, politically active youths share this mindset.

    Of course they do. But do they get airtime on CNN because their fee-fees are hurt?

29. But do they get airtime on CNN because their fee-fees are hurt?

    No, nor should they. I’m glad we agree.

30. I was conservative during college, very conservative in fact. I can say, with absolute conviction, I never once had a professor give me a hard time about it. Disagree with me? Absolutely. I took a class with a professor who was pretty much as liberal as you can possibly be and he and I disagreed about pretty much everything. He was always respectful, however, and even wrote on my final paper “I disagree with every conclusion you’ve drawn, but this was well researched, thoughtful and articulate. Fantastic job.” (I got an A on the paper as well as an A in the class and this was a professor who definately pushed his ideology in class). I’m not saying there aren’t professors out there willing to rake you over the coals for your beliefs, political, religous or otherwise but in my experience they are few and far between. In addition to which, as Jill pointed out, they can go both ways.

31. I’d like to extend a formal invitation to these students: come join MY university, in the heart of southern Kansas. Our last LGBTQ group meeting was crashed by the College Repubs. We Kansas liberals know our “oppression”, and meanie professors aren’t it.

32. The problem here is assuming that professors can only be jerks to conservatives. I came to colege from Louisiana. I was and am a flaming liberal, but I would have been deeply offended and humiliated by a professor who made fun of me for being from the South. (It was bad enough having other students ask, “You’re from Louisiana? How did you ever hear about College X?”) I had a professor use a discussion of “The Wasteland” to promote his anti abortion ideas. I had other professors who wasted time telling us non-political personal anecdotes that they pretended were relevant to the lesson. A professor wrote on a friend’s paper that her argument was “lame.” Just because a professor says a stupid, jerky thing to you doesn’t mean everyone of your political ilk is oppressed.

33. X. Trapnel, I’m not so sure about bad teaching. Not to say it doesn’t exist, but classes aren’t debating societies, either. In the link you provided, the author is complaining about one prof who doesn’t structure his syllabus to “challenge his own particular views.” What does that mean? (He also said that he disagreed with a conservative professor who actually marked him down due to personal ideology, but the author considered this no big deal and used the prf as an example of good teaching, which I found interesting–that would seem like bad teaching to me). One of my father’s colleagues is extremely brilliant and teaches a history seminar that explores the time period in ways that many students have never considered or encountered before. And it’s very, very upsetting to conservative students who go on the internet and tear her apart. But it’s very exciting to others who have never thought about history in this way before, and there are plenty of options available for those who want a more traditional approach.

    We’re not necessarily talking about survey courses that need to explore the major concepts of a discipline, various profs are going to structure their courses according to their interetsts and areas of expertise, and different students are going to respond differently and some won’t be able to handle it. I’m just saying that bad teaching sometimes means I want to hear what I hear on talk radio or I saw you at a campus rally for something I don’t agree with, now I know you’re an ideologue who’s just marking me down because you don’t like me, even though I didn’t do the work (actual examples). I’m not in college yet, but some of the classes I’ve sat in on have been hell for the profs. If you’re going to freak out everytime you’re exposed to an idea you don’t agree with, it’s a problem.

34. Sorry for the second post, but it’s not just college, either. In high school, it’s hard for a biology teacher to get through a lecture on evolution without getting into an extremely contentious religious debate, no matter how she tries to explain that the school board chooses the cirriculum (can’t spell that). As far as history goes, we skipped every section that involves Native Americans, women, or African Americans just because I think my teacher was too scared to get into it. He did this one thing last year where he brought in various platforms from political parties through history as a way to get us thinking about our own views; unfortunately, several of my classmates were most attracted to what turned out to be the platform of the KKK (I’m serious). So yes, I don’t think he’d dare share any of his views even in passing because the KKK contingent would have him up on charges if they were exposed to anything they didn’t agree with. I personally think it’s interesting to hear where teachers are coming from, even if I don’t agree. I don’t think the profs should have to worry unduly if they say something political, yes we’re a captive audience but that’s the case in a lot of situations where we’ll be involuntarily exposed to different views (go to any military base or govt building where the TV is always chained to Fox News) and we do have voices for disagreement and, you know, we’ll live.

35. I went to NYU for grad school, was the only Republican in my program and was definitely penalized and harrassed for being a conservative. Thankfully, I’m a badass and stood up for myself at every turn. But it does happen, Jill, all the time actually, and not all of us go on Fox News to bitch about it (I just bitched on my blog and got the support of my readers).

36. Poor oppessed college Repubs, its not enough for them to control all three branches of government, and the press, they also need to be coddled in school.
    If you do not want a liberal perspective do not attend a liberal school. I suggest that college R’s just continue to bury their heads in the sand.

37. I go to the Gallatin school at NYU, my friends would agree that I am quite liberal on the grand scale of things, and I have witnessed professors attack and penalize students with more conservative opinions. It may just be more prevalent in a college like Gallatin, where small reading seminars and discussion groups are the primary means of education and where most of the professors are outspokenly left of most lefties. I myself, often tired of the mindless and dogmatic neo-Marxist and anarchist statements made in class, sometimes venture for a more conservative – dare I say, neo-liberal – approach to any given readily politicized topic. Here and there, professors forgive the silliness of my comments and a hearty discussion filled with smiles ensues. Other times, and it’s not uncommon, I receive a look of shock and disgust; followed by a vomit of Are-you-serious’s and angry counter-arguments from students; and concluded with the professor affirming the brilliance of the uber-liberal comeback, the death of my comment/question, and the swift move for a new topic of discussion. It really does occur on a circumstantial basis and this is not to say that my comments/questions do not border on what I would consider “(conservative and) stupid.” But it does happen enough to say, in the name of academic freedom, that it’s a damn shame.

    On a more personal note, I wanted to puke watching those scholars of intellectual brilliance cry wolf on FOX, but to my satisfaction (and yours), I heard that kid Lasko smokes the reefer.

38. I used to run in conservatarian circles when I was an undergraduate (even working for the campus National Review clone) and when I look back on that experience, it seems to me that the conservative activists on campus really cultivated a sense of victimization (which was ironic because they accused their political opponents of the very same thing) and that really was the fuel for their activity.

    Yet most, if not all, of the folks I worked with went on to graduate and pursue bigger and better things. I certainly don’t recall any oppression in any meaningful sense of the term; they were just miffed that their worldview wasn’t confirmed for them at every turn.

39. Doesnt that guy write for the WSN?

    My favorite memory of the NYC college republicans; cute posters of before and after pics of iraq–before a map of iraq, and after a bombed out moon crater. yay. also a form called “the Origins of Western Superiority.” yay again.

40. I went to NYU for grad school, was the only Republican in my program and was definitely penalized and harrassed for being a conservative. Thankfully, I’m a badass and stood up for myself at every turn. But it does happen, Jill, all the time actually, and not all of us go on Fox News to bitch about it (I just bitched on my blog and got the support of my readers).

    Ha. Fair enough. My problem isn’t with the contention that NYU is liberal, or that there are instances where professors make students uncomfortable by professing their political opinions. It is, and there are. My problem is with the ideas that (1) students are penalized for their opinions, and (2) students are somehow barred from expressing their views. I don’t think that either of those things are particularly common. In fact, the only “evidence” that I’ve seen of student speech being “stifled” is when a student with an unpopular viewpoint speaks, and other students or the professor responds. That isn’t stifling, it’s listening and reacting. It seems to me that some of these students are defining the right to express their views as the right to express their views without being challenged. I find that tiresome.

41. Quick question for the 2nd woman in the clip: How does one equate the classist statement (southeners are ignorant) with a liberal elitism? I agree the professor was wrong and should be reprimanded, but c’mon, is that really evidence of liberal bias?

    I went to one of those large Big 10 schools and missed out on the small classes. However, during my senior year I realized I had forgotten to fulfill my humanities requirement, and quickly scrambled into the last available philosophy class. The class was populated with freshmen who wanted nothing more than to avoid voicing their opinions. Well, except for one man who let us know early on he was a conservative. He was convinced he would be persecuted for his views, despite the fact that no one cared. We were subjected to his tirades and truly paranoid views. After awhile we got bored of watching him repeatedly create a rope out of his words, tie a noose and stick his head through the loop. Mildly entertaining at first, but the man would never take any criticism seriously. He also got offended if you politely asked him to explain his view. By the end of the class, he was completely ignored, which did nothing more than bolster his claim that conservatives are discriminated against in universities: a self-fulfilling prophesy.

42. CScarlet– Yeah, I know the girl who’s the editor, she lived in my house. (Nice enough when one’s not on the topic of wingnuttery.) Did they get more than one issue off the ground?

    Thank god the whole Project Handbags thing went belly up. That was ridiculous.

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