The College Fix

You’d think liberal groups might get it every now and then

A snapshot of a few of the things conservative student groups have endured on campus in recent months: At George Mason University, Young America’s Foundation was told by campus authorities that they weren’t allowed to post flyers; at the College of Lake County, a campus employee distributed material claiming that Young Americans for Freedom was a “hate group;” the student government at the University of Scranton blocked a conservative student group from forming; the same thing happened at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; last year conservative students endured numerous violent attacks on their college campuses; an anarchist group at the University of Texas threatened to dox any student if they joined a campus conservative club; the list goes on.

It’s worth asking: How come we never hear about liberal students suffering the same indignities?

Spoiler alert: Because it doesn’t really happen. Liberal students enjoy the benefit of the doubt on virtually every college campus in the country; conservative students are generally seen as outliers at best and enemies at worst. What that means in practice is twofold: One, conservatives are much more likely to face the kinds of sustained and sometimes violent harassment as detailed above, and two, nobody cares all that much when it does happen.

Consider one recent exchange on campus between a demented, almost psychotic liberal student and a young conservative: Video of the incident, in which the conservative student’s table and materials had been vandalized and destroyed by a furious mob of progressive activists, depicts the liberal student in what appears to be an uncontrollable rage, shouting at the conservative: “Why are you shaking? Why are you shaking? Why are you shaking? Steady yourself! Steady yourself! Why are you shaking? Why are you shaking? Smile more! Smile more! With teeth! Teeth! Teeth! Smile with teeth! Smile with teeth! Smile with teeth! Smile with teeth!” Had the ideologies been reversed, this would have been a national media event, generating coast-to-coast headlines for a solid week. But since the target was a conservative, you likely never heard of it.

The cause of this phenomena are rather self evident. Progressive students, for one, seem rather incapable of controlling their own irrational anger when it comes to simply encountering students that disagree with them. Campus administrators, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly liberal, and so are less likely to punish that kind of behavior (sometimes they even engage in it themselves). Conservative students are, by this point, largely used to this unfair and sometimes frightening double standard. Yet it would still be nice if higher education stopped being so uniquely hostile to significant percentages of its student population.

MORE: Remember this year’s underreported violence and persecution against campus conservatives

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