College Fix contributor Chloe Ezzo described her experience as a Dartmouth conservative “smeared, scorned, and shouted down” in a recent op-ed for The Daily Wire.
Ezzo (pictured), who served as president of the Dartmouth Republicans, recently graduated as valedictorian. College President Phil Hanlon in his graduation speech praised the university as a place of open minds and respectful debate.
“As an openly conservative student, I can say that none of this was true,” Ezzo wrote.
Her fellow students “viewed conservatives as both unintelligent and morally reprehensible,” she wrote. “I feel that gave them license to attack conservatives with a maliciousness that’s hard to believe.”
She continued:
Moreover, I was a pariah on campus. My events were heavily protested, and I was frequently flipped off, shouted down, and sworn at. I was called a racist to my face simply for being pro-life…Despite being a valedictorian, I was called “anti-intellectual” more times than I can count. These are just a few examples, but there are many more.
I’ve spent a long time wondering what permitted this extreme hostility at Dartmouth, and I realized that it was due in large part to a combination of the Dartmouth administration who enabled it and the campus publications that set the narrative, which perpetuates a culture of intolerance towards conservatives. The purpose of these articles is to shame students for expressing right-wing views and encourage them to self-censor.
The Dartmouth barred Ezzo from writing for the paper “due to vague and unsubstantiated allegations that I somehow caused the paper’s staffers ‘safety concerns,’ but I was never given any further explanation,” she wrote.
She was also the “subject of numerous misleading articles…in Dartmouth’s campus publications.”
Dartmouth administrators also shut down an event she had hosted featuring journalist Andy Ngo, she wrote in a January 2022 op-ed in The College Fix. Ngo was slated to give a lecture on the “violent history of Antifa,” a far-left activist group.
Despite her treatment from her fellow students and administrators, Ezzo has “no regrets” she wrote. However, she said she fears what will happen with her peers. “These students…will go on to shape every facet of society to align with their worldview, and unless serious action is taken, the leftist insanity in this country is going to get much worse before it gets better.”
MORE: Detransitioner activist Chloe Cole speaks at Dartmouth despite student opposition
IMAGE: Dartmouth College; Chloe Ezzo
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