Next Friday, Donald Trump will become the new president of the United States — the first in many current university students’ lifetimes that they voted for or against, and the first Commander in Chief in a generation to instill the kind of fear Trump has for many members of our campus community.
These past few months have induced a lot of soul-searching among students across many different demographics, perspectives and interests — including the members of this very editorial board.
In some of our past writings, we’ve put emphasis on fostering unity in our campus community. Through one lens, that’s a string of buzzwords that you can find in some form from just about every college administration on the planet, but in an ideal world, that calm homeostasis is something that we should be striving for — to understand and respect our peers different views.
We now live in a world that may not be amenable to that goal.
The time for a healing campus climate conversation event has passed, as many in our community are now presented with clear dangers born out of the hate speech and oppressive rhetoric that different student groups have continued to back with outsized voices.
Muslim students are faced with the strong possibility of federally-mandated, apartheid-like policies, such as a registry, that would affect them and their families because of their faith.
Already, a federal version of the infamous “Heartbeat Bill” has been introduced to the House of Representatives, threatening a decade-old standard of allowing a woman the right to choose how to care for her body. Not to mention, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and deconstruction of the Affordable Care Act, which are already in motion.
And he still won’t stop talking about that damned, near-apocalyptic wall, which, if it is ever constructed, would stand as a monument of bigotry for years to come.
We can longer, in good faith, call for the oppressed to meet their abusers halfway with terms like ‘unity.’
This is not a call for even disrespect, let alone violence, but it’s outlandish to act as if the terms of our lives and our loved ones lives’ have not changed.
This is not a game where it doesn’t matter who wins or loses. It was silly of us to ever act like it was.
