Leave your politics at the door

We’ve all seen the meme going around on Facebook in which the top half states, “Highschool teacher: I’m not going to share my political beliefs, it’s unprofessional. College Professor: What is the square root of f*ck Trump?” Seems kinda backward, right? Shouldn’t our educators expose us to all points of view, not just their own? Well, that’s obviously not the case on the vast majority of college campuses, including here at Stevens. Up to this point, I have only come across one professor with right-leaning tendencies during my time at Stevens, but I have run into multiple professors that are openly communists and socialists.

Statistics show that there are roughly 12 liberal professors for every conservative one on college campuses. Honestly, I’m not even sure if that number is that accurate, considering many professors will identify as independents even though they are left-leaning. Many of these professors will treat a student unfairly if they find out that the student is a conservative. I think the best example of this is Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro. He has explained on numerous occasions about his college experience, where he would act like a conservative in the classroom but a communist on his anonymous exams. Even someone as well-spoken and articulate as him was afraid to challenge professors at the cost of his grades.

From what I’ve heard, there are many professors here at Stevens that are willing to lower grades solely based on the fact that a student supports a right-leaning policy. They could have cited every possible source of information and made a well-reasoned argument, but due to a professor’s preconceived biases, it doesn’t even matter. Now even though I trust my sources, I still take everything they say with a grain of salt. It might have just been them, but it’s more likely that it was the professors, considering it was a political science-related class.

In my own personal experience, I have had one TA who was outright hostile towards conservative viewpoints. In the middle of calculus recitation, he would go on a tangent calling President Trump an embarrassment and disgrace to this country. How do you even go from math to politics? He would then transition that into why the U.S. is the laughing stock of the world before finishing with, “I assume it’s ok to say this considering most college students think like me.” Well, I for one do not think like him (although I do agree that Trump can and does act childish).

So here’s what I’m advocating: Leave your politics at the door and act like a professional. It’s really not that hard, and I can say this based on my own experiences. Working in multiple student organizations, I always do my best to avoid politics knowing it can create hard feelings where there once was good friendship.