I am a big supporter of free speech, as long as it does not create a hostile educational environment for students.
Regarding your comment that “This gives Lehigh the feel of a Soviet-style reeducation camp” I have to disagree.
Lehigh is a very moderate college campus. In reality, you don’t see large numbers of students at either end of the political spectrum who are far left or far right activists and want to protest every little issue on a daily basis. As someone else mentioned, most business and engineering students tend to be practical moderates who are not very naturally focused on politics unless they are pushed into it.
However, it is true that on the spectrum of Left to Right, “the center” of the spectrum for Millennials has moved to the left compared to Baby Boomers or Gen Xers. This has nothing to do with Lehigh. It is a broad cultural shift in the views of Millennials in general, and is even more pronounced among college educated members of the next generation.
I only know about 5 students who talk about politics. 4 of them are liberal, one of them is conservative. This doesn’t mean Lehigh is super liberal, it just means that the liberals are a lot more likely to voice their opinions on campus, but this is probably true of all colleges.
I lost track of this thread for a bit. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic, particularly from the perspective of a parent with concrete facts and narrative from your son’s experience.
To address the original post, I think you corroborated the fact that the political environment is, on the whole, more liberal by the very fact that a conservative voter would …right or wrong…have to lay low… that was really the only point.
And for a faculty and administration to be more liberal than the student body…right or wrong… is par for the course at almost any private college or university in the country. No surprise there.
Regarding the incident you mentioned, I’ve also seen up close the interaction between campus admin. and student (mis)behavior vis-a-vis media and have witnessed 1) media making a good story (over dramatizing and politicizing plain immature behavior), 2) Admin. over-reaction (to some degree, understandable given current environment and duties to institutional preservation and promotion), and 3) unfortunate suffering on the parts of young people who do dumb stuff, but are not “racist, zenophobic, sexist, etc. etc.”…or, maybe they are… but do they not deserve to be treated like idiot young people who need to be taught a lesson, rather than filthy animals to be shunned by society?).
@lana426 “I’m a bit disappointed that the students don’t care, but I guess that’s something I’d learn to cope with if I get accepted.”
I think that students do care. I just think that they have a lot to do and may not be very into protests and things like that. A lot of them do care enough to do the most important thing and show up at the polls to vote, however.
For the record, freedom of speech means that the GOVERNMENT cannot censor or impede free expression. It has nothing to do with what’s allowable in a private setting, such as a college campus or workplace.
@Much2learn Thanks for the reply! I think that that’s good enough for me. As long as I have a couple of people to have a nice political conversation with, I’ll be fine. I’m someone who’s very outspoken and would love to participate in Lehigh’s UN program, but as long as I’m not going to go to an incredibly conservative school, it should work out.