Yesterday, The Miami Student published a letter to the editor by student Jake Kravitz, in which Kravitz referred to The Miami Patriot as a “symptom” of polarized political discourse. As we predicted when we founded The Miami Patriot, the campus left has not taken the challenge to their information monopoly very gracefully. We are more than willing to take the heat if it brings more attention to our message, however, it is worth setting the record straight in response to Kravitz’s letter.
Like most people, Kravitz has valid concerns about the increasingly hostile political climate. However, he addresses those concerns in bad faith by painting our publication as a negative symptom of that climate while giving no attention to how his political allies have created the environment in which the founding of The Miami Patriot became absolutely necessary.
Our Campus Editor, Charlotte Waldron, summarized it best when she referred to the letter as a “heap of hypocritical virtue signaling.” It is full of contradictions, and although it masquerades as a serious reflection on the state of Miami’s political discourse, it ends up reading more like a petty attempt to discredit our outlet with nonsensical, ideologically inconsistent claims.
Kravitz wrote, “The irony that by establishing a purely conservative outlet, The Patriot created yet another echo chamber was evidently lost on its founders.” Yet judging by how many liberals read and comment on our articles, I would say we are spreading our message far beyond our fellow campus conservatives. Furthermore, the modern conservative movement is full of diverse schools of thought, as opposed to the modern left which increasingly demands submission to its woke dogma, and this intellectual diversity of modern conservatism is reflected within our ranks.
To many campus liberals, conservatives look the same from the outside because they refuse to engage in any substantive manner with ideas from the other side of the aisle and instead resort to slandering us as “racists” and “bigots”. Look no further than the social media accounts of the College Democrats or Young Democratic Socialists of America for proof.
What unites our diverse team of right-leaning students is support for free speech, traditional American values, and patriotism. As I mentioned in my introduction article for The Miami Patriot, those ideas are under attack at universities across the country, and Miami is no exception. Standing up for those ideas in the face of adversity does not make us an echo chamber; it makes us part of the essential movement that seeks to redeem academia.
The letter goes on to say, “Miami University is home to The Miami Student, an independent and credible college newspaper, yet that was not enough for a passionate subset of students. Many, if not all, of these passionate students could have been involved with The Student in some form. Likely the problem was that The Student, aside from its opinion articles and staff editorials, does not allow for blatant pushing of partisan narratives.” A few of the current writers at The Miami Patriot who formerly wrote for or attempted to write for The Miami Student beg to differ.
One of our writers, remaining anonymous, stated, “I used to write for The Student. The news editor stopped letting me write about politics because she found out I was a Republican and said I would be too biased. Turns out the same girl was an intern for Sherrod Brown. So no, we cannot be involved with The Student.”
The claim that conservative writers can be involved with The Miami Student is also news to our Managing Editor Alli Lowe. Lowe submitted articles to The Student covering vandalism of Students for Life displays by members of Associated Student Government. She submitted these as news articles, simply chronicling the transgressions without inserting her own opinion. According to Lowe, The Miami Student never responded. It is safe to conclude that the decline to publish is a result of many writers at The Student agreeing with the acts of vandalism, and even partaking in them. The stories a paper refuses to cover show as much about its ideological leanings as the stories it chooses to run.
A third member of our team, also remaining anonymous, explained that she stopped writing for The Miami Student because she felt judged for her conservative ideas. “In an environment where free expression is encouraged, I felt as if I couldn’t share my ideas for risk of pushback or cancellation from peers. The juxtaposition was shocking.”
My problem is not with The Student’s well-established bias. Much of our content at The Patriot has clear conservative leanings that we proudly promote. Instead, my issue is with the dishonest assertion that The Student is truly open to conservative writers and our decision to create an alternative outlet must be the product of our spiteful passions. That is absurd. If The Miami Patriot is a symptom as Kravitz claims, then the intolerant ideological triangle of The Miami Student, Associated Student Government, and the College Democrats is the disease. Of course, I do not actually believe those organizations are a “disease”, despite my issues with them. That is only the case if Kravitz’s claim about The Patriot is taken to its logical conclusion. The triangle of organizations to which I referred is what made our outlet necessary.
If you read through all of our articles, you will notice that this is the first time I have questioned the integrity of The Miami Student. I had hoped the competition between our two publications would be healthy and drive each of us to be better for the sake of the student body. The Miami Student’s decision to publish this letter demonstrates that they have no desire for competition and would rather restore their monopoly.
And this brings me to yet another contradictory statement within Kravitz’s letter. “The free exchange of ideas is enshrined in our Constitution and the foundation of the democratic process. Slowly, these ideals are eroding.” Generally, I completely agree with this statement. But when it is considered in the context of Kravitz’s criticism of The Miami Patriot, it strikes me as blindly hypocritical. Anyone who supports free expression should be overjoyed at the creation of an outlet that gives a voice to a side of the political spectrum to which preexisting media does not pay much attention. After all, isn’t the left supposedly all about amplifying underrepresented voices? By doing exactly this, The Miami Patriot is practicing the “free exchange of ideas” that Kravitz claims to support. In that case, how can we be a symptom?
Kravitz continues, “Solutions are fraught and take humility, something that seems ever unlikely. Still, next time before sending a mean tweet, or starting a news outlet, maybe take a minute to seek out a person and start a conversation.” Good advice, honestly. Ironically, too many liberals at Miami refuse to have meaningful conversations with us. I wish Kravitz had followed his own advice by seeking out a person at The Miami Patriot and starting a conversation before deciding to address us in a letter to the editor at our competitor.
I am more than happy to engage in civil conversation with Kravitz or anyone at The Miami Student who has a problem with The Miami Patriot. Perhaps we could set up a forum where we discuss free speech and the political divide on campus, an event which I believe many would find beneficial for a divided university. I completely agree that political polarization and intolerance is a major problem. At Miami, this is largely caused by the freedom of students taking a backseat to leftist priorities. The Miami Patriot is not a “symptom” of that problem; we are a necessary remedy.