One great thing about my university is the huge diversity of students that overwhelms our campus. We have student organizations that include racial groups, LGBTQ groups, and political groups. The balance between all of these groups is usually equal, but as the growing presidential election becomes more popular, so are minority groups on campus.

A student in my theology course tried to compare feminism to the ancient religion of Hinduism. I kindly listened trying to understand her argument, but I just could not grasp how she could assume an entire religion to be sexist when the god Shiva's goddess, Shakti, translates to "powerful" and is seen to balance the Shiva by making themselves one. I'm not sure about others, but that sounds nothing like sexism to me--in fact, that sounds like the empowerment of women in the Hindu religion. The relation was a far reach, but other liberal students in the lecture began to agree and find symbols of sexism in small parts of ancient Indian art, such as a downward triangle representing a woman and an upward triangle representing a man. "It's unfair," they stated, "why does the man's triangle get to point upward?" In which I began to think in my head, "When did women start to care so much about which direction their triangle faced?" As I pondered the pressing concern of feminism in my theology lecture I thought about how Donald Trump's campaign may have caused an upset of Liberalism on my campus.

Soon after this lecture I walked back to my dorm, only to see flyers plastered across campus to support Socialism. I scoffed as I thought about all the Bernie supporters that flooded our university, until I realized why the Socialistic government would appeal to minorities. Just like Donald Trump appeals to extreme conservatives, Bernie Sanders appealed to minorities and Liberals for the same reason: it gave people a vision of what they wanted our country to be like. So while neither candidate may represent an America I would want to live in, I realized the reason people grasped onto the hope that Bernie gave a huge chunk of my campus was because their other option was a man that would destroy the America they envisioned their life would be.

With the growth of the two extreme political parties growing, our minority organizations on campus began to blow up. Many people began to recognize our on-campus Democrats, and our minority-affiliated associations. This publicity was great, and I was happy to hear about organizations I had never heard of that support students that may feel like they don't get the attention they deserve on campus; however, this caused a huge uproar in the support of Bernie's Socialistic government at my university as these students fought Trump's campaign. I overheard students say more disrespectful things about the Republican Party than has come out of Trump's mouth himself (which is really saying something) which completely threw me off-guard. This intense retaliation made me see the Democrats on campus in a negative light, as I always believe in a respectful rebuttal no matter how rude the opponent. I have had a student say, "Go back to Texas where you came from, gun-loving Republican." In which none of the previous statements are true about my political opinion, which gave me a bad taste in my mouth about the Liberal population on campus.

Now as I find myself face-to-face with any political opinion with someone new, I often keep my opinion to myself as a large population of our campus is Liberal, and the probability of being called a "Trump-loving, white-privileged, gun-hugger" (yes, these are all things I have actually heard) is high. So while the marketing for minority organizations is skyrocketing, which is a great, positive thing for our university, the attitude towards on-campus Republicans are low due to the extreme presidential candidates mixed with our Liberal arts campus. While not all Liberals on campus may have such a strong feeling against college Conservatives, the ones that I have bumped into have made it enough to myself feel like a minority on campus based on political belief.