When I first arrived at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I expected higher education to be a bastion for peoples to freely express themselves, providing the ability for both students and faculty to openly interact and engage with their peers regarding a multitude of subjects.
Yet this feeling dramatically changed with time. During my sophomore year, I saw the campus’ College Republicans falsely label the school as anti-free expression due to a funding dispute between the group and student government. Instead of debating the value of bringing in various perspectives to campus, the conversation focused around showcasing a conservative perspective in an arena the College Republicans found as threatening. As the fresh-faced finance chair of the College Republicans, it was an overwhelming episode highlighted by name-calling and …show more content…
A month after the Dent and his fellow conservatives’ claims, liberal students erased anti-abortion messages written on sidewalks on campus. The group responsible for the erasure, UNC’s Students United for Reproductive Justice, urged others on their Facebook page to go fan across campus with mops to remove the messages, adding an over-the-top description of the original anti-abortion statements: “This is triggering. This is violence. This is cooptation. This is not okay.”
If there is one thing I have learned from my time as an undergraduate so far, it is that free speech is no longer about sharing ideas or holding conversations, but rather shouting down one’s opposing side. Disagreement is a natural human behavior, but when expressions become heated and motivated by one’s personal beliefs, they also become unproductive. Universities should be places where ideas are discovered and discussed, not where haphazard claims and quick anger should dominate campus dialogues. It is a lesson all young political leaders should take to hear before their political opinions get the best of
Yet this feeling dramatically changed with time. During my sophomore year, I saw the campus’ College Republicans falsely label the school as anti-free expression due to a funding dispute between the group and student government. Instead of debating the value of bringing in various perspectives to campus, the conversation focused around showcasing a conservative perspective in an arena the College Republicans found as threatening. As the fresh-faced finance chair of the College Republicans, it was an overwhelming episode highlighted by name-calling and …show more content…
A month after the Dent and his fellow conservatives’ claims, liberal students erased anti-abortion messages written on sidewalks on campus. The group responsible for the erasure, UNC’s Students United for Reproductive Justice, urged others on their Facebook page to go fan across campus with mops to remove the messages, adding an over-the-top description of the original anti-abortion statements: “This is triggering. This is violence. This is cooptation. This is not okay.”
If there is one thing I have learned from my time as an undergraduate so far, it is that free speech is no longer about sharing ideas or holding conversations, but rather shouting down one’s opposing side. Disagreement is a natural human behavior, but when expressions become heated and motivated by one’s personal beliefs, they also become unproductive. Universities should be places where ideas are discovered and discussed, not where haphazard claims and quick anger should dominate campus dialogues. It is a lesson all young political leaders should take to hear before their political opinions get the best of