NSU is a liberal campus. I can’t prove it. There’s no statistical evidence. No survey has been done on the political affiliation of the students or of the professors at NSU. Yet I think for anyone who’s attended classes at NSU, the fact that it is a liberal campus is self-evident.
While I have no statistical proof of NSU’s liberal bias, I have some experiential proof. I’ve had multiple professors openly admit to being Democrats. Some have admitted it apologetically, as if they know they shouldn’t express political affiliation. Others have been unapologetic, openly bashing conservatives and conservative views during class time. In my three years here, not one professor has admitted to being a Republican.
In my communication classes, I’ve noticed that liberal media outlets are consistently held up as examples of good journalism, while conservative media outlets are used as examples of bad journalism or completely ignored. I’ve listened to professors in many different disciplines explain that conservatives hate women and that Bush caused the current economic crisis and that Fox News is where journalistic integrity goes to die. It exhausts me to listen to sometimes, especially when a professor doesn’t present both sides of an issue or portrays the conservative side of an issue unfairly.
I don’t want to make it sound like I’m being persecuted for being a Republican, because I honestly haven’t been. I’ve never been marked off for expressing a conservative viewpoint, as far as I know. But I haven’t exactly been the most willing to express views that I believed the professor and my fellow classmates wouldn’t agree with. Nothing is physically stopping me from speaking more confidently about my opinions, and I’m feeling more and more as though I ought to speak as frequently and as freely as my liberal classmates.
However, I do want it to be easier. I wish that some of my professors had made more of an effort to present an unbiased view of the subject material. I wish that my textbooks left me guessing as to the political affiliation of the author, and I didn’t have to spend hours reading multiple real-world examples in which conservatives are subtly or clearly in the wrong. I wish that my conservative classmates were as easily identifiable as my liberal ones.
College should prepare you for a real-world career. I’ve also heard and read that it should be a place where students are exposed to viewpoints that are different from their own. Even though I can’t say that what I think about key issues has changed in a significant way since I started at NSU, I can definitely say that I was afforded exposure to viewpoints that conflicted significantly with my own. The liberal students at NSU haven’t been given the same opportunity. An environment where all students feel comfortable expressing their political opinions would be ideal, if not at all realistic.
What I hope to be realistic is a student body that’s not afraid to express viewpoints that their professors and fellow classmates don’t agree with, no matter how uncomfortable they feel doing so. I hope it’s realistic to ask professors to examine biases they might be unaware of and to teach a more balanced view of the issues in their courses. Then the conservative students that I know on campus might not be so quick to agree with me when I say that NSU is a liberal school.
