Media climate affects political expression on campus

Lizandra Portal/Staff Writer

In the current media climate, both Democrats and Republicans on campus feel that their political opinions are being suppressed.  

“I think today is very polarizing in the fact that both parties…at times do not even like each other,” said junior political science major Juan Porras, who is the president of College Republicans. “For the everyday conservatives, a lot of them don’t speak or act like a conservative.”

Being conservative today, Porras said, is like someone in the 1960s who was afraid to come out as gay because of the fear of backlash from their peers.

“Nowadays, people are afraid to come out as conservative and it’s a very real thing,” Porras said.

Last fall, during a tabling event, Porras said he and a few other group members were forced to call security because a student kicked down one of their signs.  

“I truly believe that… there [is] a bias source out there in the media and that only further polarizes… both sides and creates even more tension between the right and the left,” Porras said. “Even more so in students, where you see many of them that really need to be more educated about the facts and in reality they just eat off of whatever polarized news media happens to be on TV.”

But while it’s difficult to be a conservative on a college campus, Porras recognizes that it’s not all bad.

“In class, it’s more controlled… because it’s a classroom environment with a professor,” Porras said. “I’m free to voice my opinions and many people respect that. I just hope more people could be like that.”  

Students who identify with the Democratic party, however, also feel that their own freedom of political expression is being suppressed.

“I feel like my opinion is suppressed because…[Republicans] are like ‘you call everyone a racist because they don’t agree with you’ which is not true,” said senior political science major Anaruth Solache, the new president of College Democrats.

FIU is also not like most college campuses, Solache said, as she believes the school’s administration is more conservative.

“We’ve had a good majority of the Trump administration come visit FIU,” Solache said. “We had Besty Devos [visit] and Modesto Maidique raised like a million dollars for the Trump campaign.”

Solache said that while the administration’s right-leaning politics does not favor one side over the other when it comes to students, it does show by the guest speakers asked to visit the University.

Although Democratic leaders have visited the university in the past, such as former President Barack Obama, and 2016 Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, Solache feels that the University’s more conservative administration makes it harder for Democratic speakers to visit campus as opposed to Republican speakers, especially during the 2016 election cycle.

Solache also feels that students with right-leaning political views have more of a platform to express their opinions because there are two right wing clubs on campus– Turning Point USA and College Republicans—while the Democrats only have one.

However, there are other organizations on campus such as the Black Student Union and FIU LGBTQA Initiatives that have a more progressive political outlook on campus.

“I feel like right now since the election, and [the Republican] choice won, [Republicans] feel more of a sense of freedom to express their points of view,” Solache said. “But it’s perfectly understandable because when [Barack] Obama won in 2008, I feel like [Democrats] were the same way.”

But while Porras and Solache feel like the current media climate has affected their  ability to speak freely on campus, Joshua Mandall, a senior majoring in political science and a member of College Democrats, disagrees.

“In my experience… I genuinely feel that most professors are interested to hear what we have to say,” Mandall said. “Professors I’ve had have been very professional in their point of view and [some] professors I have no idea what their political leanings are.”

But Mandall does believe professors shouldn’t generally show their political leanings because they should “be able to argue both sides.”

Senior broadcast media major Christopher Gonzalez agrees.

“Everyone’s open to an opinion,” Gonzalez said. “They’re [The FIU community is] very welcoming.”

 

Featured image retrieved from Flickr.

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