Caroline Martin/The Carolinian

Mark Parent
Opinions Editor

It’s tough being a conservative on a college campus — especially UNC-Greensboro.

You see, we’re an oppressed group on campus.

Whenever we take sensible and thoughtful positions on abortion, LGBT rights, illegal immigration, political correctness, the minimum wage or the role of government, we are almost instantly targeted by harsh rhetoric and condemnation.

It simply hurts our feelings, and it’s offensive.

So, at this point, I’m tired of it. I have decided that from now on, I am going to demand that all conservatives at UNCG are treated like liberals.

This demand entails that conservatives be guaranteed the option to: cry foul whenever a conversation triggers an unwanted thought; call a liberal an insensitive bigot for committing a microaggression against us; and, most importantly, be offered a safe space whenever an idea is mentioned that may make us slightly uncomfortable.

I’m only asking that we be treated fairly; after all, liberals on campus act as if they’re entitled to these coddling zones.

For instance, just last spring a group of feminists at Oberlin College—a bastion of liberal coddlers and speech fascists—attempted to derail the speech of a female scholar, Christina Hoff Sommers, who was offering a more conservative view on modern feminism.

Liberal feminists at Oberlin claimed that Sommers’ presence made them “feel unsafe” and her views were just too “ignorant” to be given a platform on campus.

Matthew T. Bradley / Flickr

What exactly was Sommers guilty of?

Well, for one, she is a scholar who openly questions the oft-cited rape statistics peddled on college campuses. Of course, this is not to say that she denies the existence of rape and sexual assault; in fact, Sommers told the American Enterprise Institute, “Look, to prevent rape and sexual assault, we need state of the art research. We need sober estimates…False and sensationalized statistics are going to get in the way of effective policies.”

Specifically, Sommers is concerned with the statistic most college students—including the author of this piece—believe to be shockingly true, which is that one in five college women have been raped or sexually assaulted. Yet, as the authors of the report that spurred the statistic write in a Time Magazine op-ed, the survey in which the results were derived was web-based and contained a multitude of procedural and tactical limitations.

Now, I must admit, I’m not fully supportive of Sommers analysis of the newfound data on rape and sexual assault. Yet, I’m perfectly willing to listen to her views in order to form an objective opinion.

Oberlin students, however, felt very differently.

In response to Sommers’ speech, a group of Oberlin students held an alternate event where they were protected from such vile rhetoric.

And, according to Town Hall, the students that chose to attend Sommers’ speech “frequently interrupted her” and “many students sat in the audience with duct tape over their mouths.”

In other words, liberal students were so confident in their opinions that the mere thought of an alternative viewpoint was unfathomable. I don’t know about you, but, to me, that wreaks of narrow-minded arrogance.

Certainly, this is not an isolated incident. For various reasons, individuals such as Bill Maher and Condoleezza Rice have been prohibited from speaking at certain colleges because of complaints from disgruntled liberal students—emphasis on “liberal.”

Then again, according to these same people, I’m a sadistic conservative that hates women, immigrants, science, and poor people. It’s just so hypocritical that it makes my head spin.

Oh, but I’m not finished ranting yet.

This past summer, the University of New Hampshire released a “Bias Free Language Guide” that, if followed, would lead to disciplinary action against every conservative college student in the country.

Among the “problematic” terms that should be avoided on campus are: American, illegal alien, Caucasian, mothering, fathering, and foreigners.

That’s right, it’s allegedly offensive for someone to classify my race as “Caucasian”; instead, I should be classified as a “European-American Individual.”

And don’t even think about referring to yourself as an American. You see, it’s offensive to identify as an American, because it’s inconsiderate of the other countries in North and South America.

As a side-note, please forget that—aside from American Samoa—the word “America” does not appear in the official state name of any other country in the world.

With that being said, I feel as if I have no choice but to demand access to conservative safe spaces.

I’m just too tired of having to argue with nonsensical liberals who have no grasp of arithmetic and reality.

It would just be a whole lot easier to hold private events—exclusive to conservatives—that are safe from media bias and progressivism.

Oh, I get a thrill up my leg just thinking about it!

But, alas, my wish will never come to fruition.

In the end, I will always deprive myself of an ideological safe space, because it inhibits intellectual curiosity. What a pity!

It’s such a shame that I’m too concerned with being open-minded, valuing the opinions of others, and persuading my ideological opponents to come over to my way of thinking.

Maybe, if liberals were courageous, they would stand up to this idiocy and allow free speech to reign supreme on college campuses.

But, based on what I’ve seen over the past three and a half years, that request seems to be a bit far-fetched.

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