“Elephant? What elephant?”
Between the anti-Bush greeting cards in the bookstore, the Obama flyers decorating the student plaza and the Bush-as-a-monkey printout taped up in the scene shop, it’s pretty clear where the political loyalties of most of our college’s population lie. But during this hotly contested Election 2008, we must not forget the Republicans in our midst – supporters of John McCain instead of Hillary or Barack. They’re the Few but Proud – the Republicans of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.
There is a longstanding College Democrats Club here on campus, but we’ve never had a College Republicans Club that lasted very long. In fact, when FCLC conservatives, in preparation for this historic election year, tried to gather support for a College Republicans Club, their efforts failed. This was in part because they just couldn’t get the required sixty signatures on their petition – liberal students weren’t very interested in helping the conservative cause, and there weren’t enough conservative students who wanted to publicly express their Republican politics.
Artur Jagielski, FCLC ‘09, who helped spearhead the movement to form a College Republicans Club at FCLC, said that the process was difficult because of “some of the criticism I received from several people [Democrats]. I’m sure there are more Republicans on this campus who don’t voice their opinion, and if we could reach out to them, maybe we could form a club here on campus.”
But who is it that’s really making the Republicans feel unwelcome at Fordham? It’s got to be the students, right? Everyone knows how hot-headed and opinionated college students can be. Actually, conservative students say that it’s not their peers who are the problem. It’s the people you’d expect to have a more reasoned approach: the professors.
While both the faculty and the student body are filled with Democratic supporters, Jagielski and Republican recent grad Howie Ray, FCLC ‘06, assert that while professors are very narrow-minded, fellow students seem open to debate. “I found a lot of the student body was open to intelligent political discourse,” pointed out Ray. Jagielski says that liberal politics aren’t even much discussed among students: “… I don’t hear much talk about it [liberal politics] outside of the classroom. All I see is pro-Obama posters here and there.”
But professors in many departments, say Ray and Jagielski, frequently lash out at the president, loudly lamenting the fact that we have a Republican administration in Washington D.C. And while most FCLC conservatives understand that liberal teachers have complaints about Bush (and are more than prepared for the Bush- related “litanies of woe” professors often launch into), they feel beleaguered nonetheless. Professors, claims Jagielski, “…continuously bash the president [and] conservative politicians without taking into account that there may be Republicans sitting in the classroom. They just assume that if you are a Republican, you must be a bad person.” Of course some courses – political science or perhaps journalism classes – clearly demand political discussion, but Ray feels that professors often veer very far off topic just to have the opportunity to fume about the right. Ray commented, “In fact I had one class that turned into just bashing Republicans and the ironic part was that it was supposed to be about the UN.”
Even some of the campus’s liberal professors think that their colleagues go too far in expressing their Democratic political views in class. Theology Department Chairman and lifelong Democrat Aristotle Papanikolaou says that students over the years have told him that there is a “sense that the general climate within the university itself is liberal…and there were specific classes where they felt some kind of bias and thus were intimidated to present a conservative view.” Papanikolaou doesn’t think that it is right for professors to act in this partisan manner, and that “it’s somewhat implied in the academic setting that freedom of expression should be fostered, and it’s also implied that the classroom is a place for critical thinking – that the purpose of education is to explore various points of view…”
Both Papanikolaou and Alison Castaneda, FCLC ‘07, who is a Republican, feel that not only do professors express their liberal ideas too frequently and strongly but that they also end up silencing class discussion. As Castaneda commented in a previous Observer article, “Nothing stifles a debate or discussion more than having the professor definitively state their views – who’s going to argue with the old guy with the doctorate?” Papanikolaou , also recognizing the danger inherent in the intellectual weight professors’ viewpoints may carry, asserted that “professors need to be aware of their power, that they’re perceived to be people who know more, that students are aware of that, and as a result, may be intimidated to challenge the professor.”
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