It is no surprise that a university like Miami has a vast majority of students and staff that typically side with liberal ideologies. However, it may be a surprise to some when they see just how much Miami’s staff can cater toward liberal students, and alienate the ones who are not.
The feeling of alienation because of political beliefs is all too familiar to a vast majority of conservative students at Miami University. Following recent incidents involving Miami faculty and conservative students, many Miami students have decided they have had enough, and started to speak out against Miami’s liberal hypocrisy.
One Miami student in particular, who remains anonymous by request, spoke about an incident in which one of their professors made students listen to a conservative radio podcast, only to belittle it, criticize it, and call it “unfactual.” The student went on to explain that their professor claimed they had to “vent” after the podcast, and the professor proceeded to make “snarky comments” about the episode.
When asked if they had spoken out about this issue, the student explained they had “not spoken up about these biases in class, mainly due to the fear of retaliation through my grade, or by my peers.”
Although their issues involving the professor and the class were minor, this incident is still one of the many examples of how Miami professors have been alienating conservative students for their political beliefs.
This story is only one of many that conservative students at Miami are finally starting to step up and speak out about. In reality, situations like this happen to conservatives at Miami quite frequently. Some of these cases are more severe, like Maddie Taylor’s story.
While attending one of her classes, Maddie Taylor found her professor talking to the class about white privilege. During the discussion, Maddie felt like she should respectfully share her conservative opinion about white privilege in response to other opinions that her peers had shared. To her surprise, Maddie was bombarded with retaliation and insults from her fellow classmates.
“I decided to say my viewpoint and no one else agreed with me,” Maddie stated. She went on to say, “People started to call me names and try to prove me wrong. It went on for the entire class and I ended up crying afterwards. Even though I looked things up and I had all of the facts straight I was still bashed in the end.”
After having her own peers insult her in front of the whole class, Maddie decided to reach out to her professor to talk about the incident after class. Maddie was again surprised to see that her professor showed no interest in acknowledging the fact that one of her students was verbally attacked for having a differing opinion.
Maddie states that her professor “didn’t really think that people were going against me” showing just how little her professor seemed to care about the incident.
When asked about how the incident made her feel, Maddie said,“I felt very alone and I also felt like I couldn’t speak my beliefs. I was called ignorant and I ended up ending the class by explaining how I’m not racist. I felt very attacked and I didn’t talk for the next two classes after that.”
Not only does this incident show how Miami students and staff can make conservative students feel alienated, it also shows just how much liberal professors will favor their liberal students. By not siding with Maddie when she was insulted during class, her professor was essentially allowing students to insult one of their peers because she did not share the same liberal beliefs. Actions like this are truly unacceptable, and go against the principles that Miami claims to be founded upon. Students should not get a free pass to insult one another just because the professor dislikes one particular opinion that a student holds.
Under no circumstances should incidents like these be happening at a college that claims to be respectful of others’ individual beliefs. Miami University claims to be a college that respects all of their students’ beliefs equally, but they have yet to prove this claim. If Miami is to gain the trust of their conservative students, they need to stop giving liberal students free passes to attack conservatives and make them feel hated and alienated. Miami has yet to explicitly show any concern for these conservative students, let alone the many others who have yet to share their stories.
I do not expect Miami to adequately address this issue. Why would they? The last thing Miami would do is show acceptance of a political demographic that a large majority of their students and staff dislike. Miami is able to get away with catering toward liberal students and alienating conservatives because most of Miami’s loudest voices align with the liberal ideology. Not to mention the fact that most conservative students who experience these issues stay silent. Those that do speak out are bullied into silence by students and staff, so much to the point that nobody knows they are being alienated.
Miami needs to honor their pledge of being tolerant to students of all political backgrounds. In order to do this, they need to keep their staff from catering towards only liberal students. At the very least, Miami needs to encourage their professors to tolerate respectful opinions from both sides of a political issue rather than just the one they agree with. While this issue still continues to this day without the acknowledgement of Miami University, one thing is for sure: Miami needs to fulfill their promise of being inclusive to students of all political backgrounds, even if they disagree with them.
I think it’s really interesting here that Maddie’s opinions on white privilege wasn’t included as part of this story. Why could that be? Maybe because her opinions are not only insensitive and racist, but also go against the literal mountains of evidence that suggests that white privilege is a very real thing? Being “inclusive to students of all political backgrounds” doesn’t really apply when your political background is rooted in false information and reactionary lies.
How ridiculous. Being “inclusive to students of all political backgrounds” is what it says it is. There isn’t some clause that says “only right opinions allowed.” You can’t just arbitrarily decide on your own who owns the right to call their ideology the correct one especially since even the most right wing or reactionary political background is still a political background. You have to give a reason why said background should be excluded or else you’re just engaging in special pleading. Many ideologies also lie on a spectrum or can’t be 100% sandwiched into some sort of ideological label. Even the most ardent leftists may harbor or have a few beliefs which may be “reactionary” or conservative in nature. Should those leftists be allowed to share those views? Should people be harassed for not adhering 100% in an overtly dogmatic fashion? Whether or not her comments were insensitive (which I doubt the author of this article had access to) is completely irrelevant to whether or not she should enjoy freedom of speech
Big snowflake energy
Maddie seems like a snowflake lol suck it up. No one likes your view points because they’re racist.
If there is a conspiracy “liberal bias” among professors at Miami, why wasn’t Douglas Brooks fired when he called BLM protestors monkeys? Sounds like Miami is interested in protecting the status quo above all else.
Nobody is claiming there is some mass conspiracy where all professors just get together in a small room and go “Lets bully some conservatives guys.” Bias can exist via natural social mechanisms and doesn’t have to be created or heavily managed by a small group.
As for Douglas Brooks, using him as a single example is a very, very silly move. You’re using a single incident out of many. Outside of legal issues, do you actually think the majority of Miami’s professors and administration agreed with the decision? How many spoke out against it and how many spoke out for it? The issue with using a single isolated incident is I can also find plenty onto the contrary which would pit my view over yours. To make a valid point you have to find more than just a single isolated case and demonstrate that it is a systemic effort/phenomenon at Miami which I doubt you can. If a student says something publicly similar to how Douglas Brooks did, I doubt they’re going to get away without discipline.
Also the status quo is not what you think it is . Our nation is much more socially left than most European countries contrary to popular perception. We have more relaxed abortion laws than nations like Poland, Germany (Allowed mainly in first trimester, mandatory 3 days counseling beforehand), Switzerland, Russia and more. Many European countries are also stricter on issues such as gay marriage (we spend 700 million a year promoting such abroad), euthanasia immigration and even drug legalization. We aren’t even the most religious nation when compared with Europe and our federalism currently complicates things as well.
BLM literally received an endorsement from virtually every major corporation, celeb, and influential billionaire and yet you’re gonna act like you guys oppose the status quo lmao. When Amazon, the company that makes tear gas, playstation and Coca Cola (who enabled violence against Colombian workers)supports your movement you know that you’re probably not a threat to the way things are currently flowing.
As an alumna of Miami, I am frequently asked for donations. There were left-leaning faculty when I attended Miami, but conservative thoughts, opinions, and papers were fairly accepted. It sounds like this is non longer the case. I’m now giving my donations to Hilsdale.