On Thursday, October 22, the Concordia student body received an email from the Student Government Association’s civic engagement advocate, Hannah Wilson, regarding vandalism that occurred at the SGA voter week engagement table. This vandalism had happened almost a full week prior to this email being sent out, so I assumed it was going to actually address the issue and denounce this type of behavior. Sadly, it did not.
If you didn’t know what happened on Friday, October 16, then this email did nothing but leave you wondering what was vandalized. In fact, this would’ve been the case for me if it wasn’t for a friend who sent a picture of it to me. The vandalism that occured was of the President Donald Trump cutout, with words and phrases like “leech” and “I rape kids.”
This was a deliberate attack against conservative students, which at Concordia, we conservatives have become very familiar with. To me it seems like the Democratic Party has gotten awfully good at destroying and vandalizing people’s property, but it’s not a big deal because it happened to the conservatives, so who cares I guess. Here’s what may come as a shock to many at Concordia: there are a lot of conservatives on campus and we are getting tired of hiding how we feel and being told we don’t matter.
I would like to pose this question: if this would’ve happened to a Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama cutout, would we have received the same response from SGA and would it have taken a week? No. I can almost guarantee that SGA would’ve responded sooner and with more detail about the vandalism, not to mention they would’ve denounced that type of violence, which wasn’t done in their email to us. Nowhere in the email did they say that the vandalism was bad, wrong or unnecessary. Instead, they said that “We want to acknowledge that emotions are high across the board. We see you. We are you.” Who exactly does SGA think they are? I know for certain they aren’t conservative and I will go far enough to say they don’t support or care about the conservative students on campus. You are not us. You don’t have to worry about professors finding out you support Trump and retaliating against you, or students calling you a racist nazi, which I have experienced firsthand.
Thankfully, SGA addressed this type of behavior in the email as well stating that “While some of us are desperate for civil political discourse, we recognize others (across the political spectrum) might not feel like being civil right now.” How about instead of making excuses SGA calls out the people that are actually being uncivil, the liberals. Oh wait, if they did that, they’d be going against themselves and lose some of their following and control.
The culture at Concordia is very much rooted in liberal ideas which I knew prior to coming here, and I still love so many aspects about Concordia, but I just want you to think about the last time we had a conservative speaker brought to campus by the school. I am a senior and I can’t name one, yet I could name several speakers who have come to Concordia and have degraded Trump, his supporters and even this great country we get to call home.
In the end, SGA sending this email confirmed all of the thoughts I had about their feelings towards conservatives on campus, which is that we are the students of campus who don’t deserve to be respected or treated fairly because we think differently. I urge Sophie Newcomb and Quinn Wrigley, our leaders, to step up and come to a Young Americans for Freedom meeting to actually hear from conservatives to understand how we feel. It’s time for the liberals to grow up and understand that their thoughts are not the only ones that exist, not only on this campus, but in the real world. We have been civil in our political engagement as the email urged all of us to do, and it’s time for the liberals to start doing the same.
Garrett I applaud you for posting this article. I myself as a conservative on campus share these feelings. It seems as though the school disregards us. And I have experienced first hand being afraid to share my thoughts or opinions for fear of retaliation by a teacher. And I think you speak for most of us when saying that all we want is civil discourse. It seems as though at Concordia, that if you are not a liberal, you don’t matter.
Thank you Garrett for writing this. Like others have said before it’s time that conservatives on this campus receive the same level of respect and entitlement to their own opinion just as do liberals which has always been a problem on this campus. It’s sad to see such a great school such as Concordia ruin people’s experience here because of the lack of respect students with liberal view points show to those with conservative ones. It’s obvious that this school has liberal values which is fine, however, it’s not ok for the institution and it’s faculty to bash conservative students just based on their beliefs.
Atta boy Garrett! It’s time for the silent majority to not be so silent! You didn’t go into this and write a bunch of weak insults and attack people personally, you brought up the problems at hand and how conservatives are targeted unfairly all the time. We are always willing to hear the other side, but liberals, not so much!
Well said Garrett! Thank you for sticking up for what you believe in!
Thank you Lauren, I appreciate the support!
I absolutely loved this write up! I applaud the concordian for printing this. Its about time we have an article that doesn’t bash conservatives and our great country. I hope the administration and the professors take this to heart and become more mindful of how their actions and words indoctrinate our fellow students, which is not their job.
Thanks TJ, I can only hope that people give this article and honest read to see how we feel!
While being a student at Concordia I have seen numerous emails sent to me about various issues on campus. The way that the SGA went about addressing previous campus hate related issues was much different. They were acknowledged immediately, as students we knew exactly what occurred, and it was stated that the behavior would not be tolerated. This recent email that was sent out, however, across campus was very broad, and I wouldn’t even had known what happened if there wasn’t pictures being posted on social media about it. The pictures that were posted even tagged Concordia multiple times, so they knew exactly what had occurred on campus. A week after seeing this post, finally, something was said, and it was very disappointing to see the response from the SGA. No excuse for a college to not acknowledge or take appropriate action against the destruction of property on campus.
Thank you for the comment DH, I also agree that this email was so vague several kids probably don’t even know what was vandalized.
Thank you for writing this article, Garrett! I am also a conservative that attends Concordia College and share the same feelings as you and many others. We do not get treated the same as Democrats do on campus. Many of the events on campus (such as COSS) have degraded our President, Donald Trump, his supporters, and the United States of America. I knew Concordia was more of a liberal college, but I did not expect the College to allow vandalize and hate toward conservative Trump supporters.
Thanks Morgan, I am glad you enjoyed it. Great point about COSS and how that is just another event used to put down conservative ideas in the name of “education”.
It is nice to see the Concordian finally support another voice of Concordia. I know so many students who are afraid for their grades even if their conservative political opinions have nothing to do with the class, or they’re afraid of other students getting hostile with them. It is only fair that both sides own up to their actions, and the student who vandalized the cutout should be held accountable, because as this article pointed out, if it would have been done to the Biden cutout, it would have been a much bigger deal. Thank you for writing and publishing this!!!
Thanks Emily, I am glad I am not the only one that recognizes this double standard