The College Fix reports that the minority of conservative students at a Lutheran liberal arts school in Minnesota claims that the political animosity toward them from Democrat-supporting students is so intense they fear violence.
Four in five students at St. Olaf College, known for its music program, voted for Hillary Clinton in last November's election, while only one in ten pulled the lever for Donald Trump. But it's the open hostility from the tolerant liberals that has the conservative minority staying in the closet, according to the student newspaper, the Manitou Messenger:
Of the 12 students interviewed by the Manitou Messenger, 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.” Over the next couple of days, she overheard multiple students threaten to hurt the next conservative or Republican they saw. Vice President of St. Olaf College Republicans Kathryn Hinderaker ’19 had a similar experience.
“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,” Hinderaker said. “Obviously, it didn’t feel super safe.”
One St. Olaf conservative student said she “went home for awhile” because of the hostiility in her classes. Online harassment subsequently led her to transfer to another school after the fall semester.
Then on Feb. 18, a student posted an unsolicited photo of a group of students that supposedly included Trump supporters and encouraged fellow students to “remember their faces.”
The Messenger has more:
“A lot of people said the characteristics of the candidates were the characteristics of the voters,” Dawson Kremlacek ’20 said. “Conservatives didn’t want those labels. They didn’t want to be viewed differently.”
As a result, students will self-censor during class, even in discussion-based courses.
“I’m fine being political with a one-on-one discussion,” [freshman Josh] Larson said, “but when everyone else is liberal in the class … I keep my head down.”
One political science student who said her professor “started every class with basically just ridiculing Trump for about 20 minutes” now intends to transfer to another school next year. Yet another student said he keeps quiet about his conservatism so that his anti-Trump professor won’t “possibly bring down my grade.”
At least one St. Olaf conservative was bold enough to encourage his like-minded peers to quit acting like “some oppressed minority group” because “it engages in the same identity politics that already make it so hard to have constructive conversations about challenging issues.”