<p>Hi parents, I just want to vent and get reactions/advice!</p>
<p>I attend a top liberal arts college in the Northeast, and while I thought I would have the opportunity to be around a diverse group of students with many perspectives and opinions, I could not have been more mistaken. I have had to carefully conceal my conservative views in order to avoid serious grade, job, and social consequences (and keeping my mouth shut has never been a strong point!) There is a restrictive intellectual fashion here, and failure to conform to it means one is ostracized and treated as a pariah. It's ironic that the "liberal" and "intellectual" atmosphere my school supposedly promotes is so stifling that it forces conservative students to remain silent rather than suffer attacks on their intelligence and beliefs. I'm sick of professors' irrelevant diatribes, and sick of a campus that claims to be diverse while grossly misrepresenting the real world. It's truly disturbing that young adults are thrust into an academic environment where all the people in power share the same basic perspective and worldview, where there's essentially no intelligent political debate because most liberals can't stand to consider a different point of view. Conservative students who have dared to be themselves have had their rooms vandalized and their posters ripped down. Students who don't support anything less than totally unrestricted access to abortion and same-sex marriage are unable to speak about their views at all. It's unthinkable that a woman would choose to stay home with her children rather than work. People with no understanding of economics unthinkingly accept leftist economic thought. </p>
<p>Also, the best colleges reputation wise tend to be the most uniform in their liberal views, so the brightest minds, the people who will have a big impact, spend their college lives not being exposed to alternative viewpoints and serve as a captive audience for academics to indoctrinate.</p>
<p>It's a sad, sinister situation and I think it explains a lot about what's wrong with our society today.</p>