Education

Conservative Students Live In Terror Of Liberal Peers At Minnesota College

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
Font Size:

Conservative students at St. Olaf College, a Lutheran liberal arts school in Minnesota, live in terror of their liberal colleagues and are afraid to discuss politics on campus, The College Fix reports.

Not only are they outnumbered, as 80 percent of the college voted Democratic in the last presidential election, many have been violently threatened by college neighbors.

According to the Manitou Messenger: “Of the 12 students interviewed…several have been violently threatened because of their political beliefs, and almost all of them feel as though they can’t speak up about politics on campus – in class, online or with their friends. …On the night of the election, a student in the Pause threatened to beat up [College Republicans President Emily] Schaller, calling her a ‘f***ing moron.'”

The college newspaper has heard multiple reports of students who “threaten to hurt the next conservative or Republican they saw.”

“I think one of the hardest things was, the second day, I went into Buntrock and someone yelled from the bottom, ‘if you voted for Trump, you better be f***ing scared.’ Everyone clapped and applauded,” recounted Kathryn Hinderaker, vice president of the St. Olaf College Republicans. “Obviously, it didn’t feel super safe.”

One St. Olaf conservative spoke of retreating from all the hostility and she just “went home for awhile” because of it. She said online harassment forced her to transfer to another school with the conclusion of the fall semester.

There have even been reports of liberal students posting pictures of their conservative peers with the caption, “remember their faces.”

The College Republicans did not even endorse Trump nor make get-out-the-vote phone calls during the election.

The professors at St. Olaf get into the act too.  According to one political science student, her instructor “started every class with basically just ridiculing Trump for about 20 minutes,” while another student says his professor’s constant anti-Trump tirades ensures that conservatives keep their mouths shut in order to preserve their academic standing.

But at least one St. Olaf conservative doesn’t have any time for right-of-center snowflakes, discouraging his peers from responding like “some oppressed minority group.”

Otherwise, St. Olaf is a most tolerant and inclusive college. The administration recently invited former Communist Party candidate Angela Davis to speak and has renamed an arts building after the man it first honored was suspected of engaging in sexual harassment.

Follow David on Twitter