It’s tough being a conservative student at Vassar College. At a school where just three percent of students identify as Republicans, according to a recent Political Science Department survey, it is very difficult to express dissenting opinions, especially at a school as politically charged as Vassar. Often the opinions of conservatives come across as politically incorrect, offensive, and bigoted in some form or another. The loud liberal voice at Vassar tries its hardest to drown out conservative voices, and the Vassar Student Association (VSA), the student government, occasionally takes swipes at the only right-of-center club on campus, the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU).
Conservative students are immediately judged and disrespected, and stereotypes immediately come to mind, skewing interactions away from anything of meaning and value. It seems that our opinions are a tremendous bother to those who disagree with us, and analyzing and evaluating our ideas is simply too much of a bother. Instead, the “triggered” student throws a fit, whether in person or on social media, and proceeds to use buzz words and insults to battle their way through an argument. A conservative would be better off debating a brick wall than some of the leftists here; at least the wall will make no attempts at belittling its opponent with ad hominem rhetoric.
Conservative students at Vassar are subject to judgement and bias, and this extends to the VCLU as well. Students demonize the club simply because of the ideology it promotes, and yet many have never been to a meeting, never attended a VCLU event, and never actually had a conversation with any members. Many students believe the VCLU should not exist, and would rather conservative students not attend Vassar. If “VCLU” and “conservative” were replaced with “QCVC” and “queer”, “BSU” and “black”, or anything similar and someone made that statement, there would be outrage, and cries of marginalization would fly in from all directions. However, since conservatives are a political minority, very few are sympathetic to the extra challenges we face at Vassar, even as they are similar to the challenges faced by various other marginalized groups, which include premature judgment, bias, and voice silencing.
There are a plethora of instances against the VCLU that have marginalized the small club over the years. I say marginalized because these curveballs fit the definition of the word, which, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means: “to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group.” There is no list of who can be marginalized. Anyone can be marginalized. This includes conservatives. The Moderate Independent Conservative Alliance (MICA), the predecessor to the VCLU, was hijacked by students from the Vassar Left. Under the guise that moderate leftism was the Vassar equivalent of far-right, these people proceeded to join the club, gain majority membership, vote themselves in as officers, and turn MICA into a left-of-center organization, deliberately derailing the mission of the club, and marginalizing members who were actually conservative, effectively silencing their voices in their own safe space. This resulted in a rewriting of the club’s constitution and the formation of the current right-of-center-club.
Since its formation, the VCLU has suffered a number of encumbrances at the hands of the Vassar Left. In the spring of 2014, VCLU members put up their own Israel Wall of Truth to counter the one put up by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). While the SJP wall remained untouched, the VCLU wall was defaced and vandalized. The administration decided the VCLU wall stirred too much controversy, and ordered it removed. The SJP wall was allowed to remain. The conservative voice on this issue was forcibly removed, made to seem unimportant, and the power of VCLU members to engage in activism was revoked, making this a case of conservative marginalization.
Last year, the VCLU sponsored a lecture by former chief speechwriter and Vassar alumnus Marc Thiessen’89, who spoke about America’s failed response to radical Islam. Before Thiessen was even on campus the event was decried as Islamophobic and racist. I do not know how many students have heard of him before the lecture, but I can tell you that they judged it before the lecture started, and that skewed their thoughts about the content. This judging also occurred after the lecture. Then President of the Middle Eastern Students Collective and VSA Vice-President for Operations and now former VSA President (as of May 1st) Ramy Abbady stated in his opinion piece, “It is people like Marc Thiessen who cause this racism to continue to exist and spread. It is groups like VCLU who, whether consciously or not, want this hate to exist. By bringing this man to Vassar, there has been a very direct attack of Muslim students and many other brown bodies. This is completely unacceptable.” He went on, “This is Islamophobia. This is racism. Presenting a contrary viewpoint is not justification for these things. This man has only served to further perpetuate an existing environment of hostility.”
I think it’s a safe bet that “This” refers to the lecture. So, according to the person who for the 2015-16 school year was at the helm of the entire VSA and who was the most influential student in college policymaking, the VCLU promoted Islamophobia and perpetrated a direct attack on Muslim students and (somehow) other brown bodies. Conservatives are certain to feel more welcome on campus with these remarks directed at them.
On top of that, the VCLU was barred from programming and saw its budget frozen due to some errors made in obtaining funding for the Thiessen lecture and informing the VSA of this funding. However, while the club certainly messed up in this instance, I do not believe that any other organization would have received so harsh a sanction for a similar lapse in judgment. Furthermore, when the VCLU requested permission from the VSA Council to appeal the sanctions before the Judicial Board, for the request came after the deadline due to the VSA not actually telling the VCLU about the sanctions, the request was denied with no explanation. Nobody spoke against the motion. Nobody expressed any qualms against it. Yet the VCLU failed to see justice. Justice was denied to the Vassar Right, and this is a serious case of marginalization.
Whenever the VCLU’s efforts are impeded due to negative bias and bigotry, it suffers marginalization, and its members suffer with it.
I can tell you based on my own experiences that conservatives face unique challenges at Vassar. Many times I would express an unpopular opinion, and many times I drew a firestorm. I have been called racist, sexist, and multiple expletives, and I took a lot of hate when I tried to form a pro-life club. Few people bother to actually analyze my statements, instead immediately dismissing and insulting them because they originate from right-of-center thought. These same people would consider such reactions marginalizing if the voice was that of a different minority, say a person of color or a disabled person, but since it came from a political minority, they don’t care.
Being a member of a political minority is very different from being a member of other types of minority groups. Unlike with most other groups, it is usually impossible to identify a conservative on-sight. However, once a conservative is identified, that person is faced with the similar issues of bias that all the other groups face, though the degree to which this occurs varies, and this only seems to be a problem at Vassar, not the surrounding community.
Consider this: does the majority of the student body have any idea of the struggles and harassment that conservatives on this campus have to endure each day? No. In the same way that it is claimed that white people will never know and fully understand the struggles of people of color, non-conservatives will never know and fully understand the struggles of conservatives at a far-left institution. There is a privilege that comes with being a student of leftism that is denied to students of rightism. Members of the Vassar Left enjoy holding the majority opinions and the loudest voices. The vast majority of professors lean left, and few people if any have any qualms against politically left clubs.
The Vassar Right is denied these privileges. Any idea put forward by this group is immediately subject to a heightened degree of scrutiny. Very few professors are on the right, and there is only one club to join that fits the ideology. Many schools have a chapter of College Republicans, College Libertarians, Young Americans for Liberty, and maybe even a few groups dedicated to one facet of conservative ideology. At Vassar, there is only the VCLU, which is itself a chapter of YAL.
Conservatives are a marginalized group at Vassar College. We have been repeatedly judged and subject to stereotyping, forced into positions of insignificance and harassed for our viewpoints. Our voices are ignored or silenced, and our club, our safe space, the VCLU, is repeatedly subject to hardships and difficulties for no reason than simply attempting to carry out its mission statement like all other 100+ clubs do. It’s hard to be a conservative student at Vassar, but we remain, not hoping but acting to change this hostile campus climate.
