Here’s how Zachary Hayes starts his op-ed for Loyola Marymount University’s Loyolan:
Being a minority at LMU is extremely difficult. Every day, I get the impression that the majority of students and even the faculty do not care about my interests. The atmosphere of hostility is quite palpable. The expected response to this implicit condemnation would be to demand a safe space in which to express my grievances.
Then he drops the bomb:
The only problem is that I am a different kind of minority: a conservative Republican.
He explains that conservatives are the only demographic not valued by a Jesuit administration that “announced solidarity with African American, Hispanic, Muslim, LGBTQ and undocumented students.”
The dominant “groupthink” on campus was illustrated by a recent “Pizza and Politics event” where three professors analyzed President Trump “from a variety of perspectives: liberal, more liberal and most liberal,” Hayes says.
The problem with unchecked groupthink is that it “encourages radicalism” by shocking students when they do hear different ideas, he says:
This danger was made clear at UC Berkeley on Feb. 1, when militant left-wingers reacted fiercely to the planned speech of libertarian provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on campus. In the face of massive pressure, administrators canceled the speech. However, the activists rioted anyway, starting fires and causing thousands of dollars in property damage to the university.
Hayes warns the LMU administration to not let its campus climate reach that boiling point.
In a comment under the op-ed, an elderly alumnus promised to send Hayes’ column to a network of 250 other alumni:
I will leave it to them if they wish to continue to contribute to an academic institution that has become no better than Berkeley or UC Davis or, even worse, Cal State LA … one thing all of us can agree on: LMU understands and loves the money.
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