Throughout my life, I’ve always felt like an outsider. My family is Jewish and middle-income from Miami, Florida. Because my parents valued my education, they encouraged me to attend a private high school. I was only able to do this by applying for and receiving financial aid. In high school, I felt alienated by my wealthier classmates. Our lifestyles were dramatically different. They went on lavish vacations while my family stayed home. They went to upscale restaurants that I couldn’t afford. Every interaction with them came with a price tag.
At Vanderbilt University, I finally felt like I fit in. As a Pell Grant recipient, I worked two jobs for a total of 40 hours a week in addition to my 15-hour course load. I saw many other students working as hard as me, who were also just barely making ends meet.
Soon after, I joined the student government’s Economic Inclusivity Committee. One of the first things I did was help persuade the school to stop charging for laundry in the dorms. Vanderbilt owned the washing machines; why not let students spend their financial aid money on things they really need, like food? Nobody knew much about me, but they knew of my work.
My junior year, I was appointed chairman of the committee. Then, several people in student government encouraged me to run for student president. I quickly received 250 petitions and qualified to be on the ballot. I looked at the election as another opportunity to pursue my passion to advocate for lower-income students.
From the first day of my campaign for student president, a sinister mob started to form around me. The student paper posted an article that focused less on my platform of financial inclusivity and instead highlighted details of my fraternity involvement. After the article was posted, many people learned everything they needed to know about me: I was white, in a fraternity, and Jewish.
Suddenly, I started to get tweets and group messages where people told me to go to hell, that I was a white supremacist and a racist confederate. My senior adviser, a woman of color, was asked why she supported a colonizer.
The other candidates’ supporters tore down our posters and ripped my head off pictures. Fake social media posts circulated that my fraternity had parties with Confederate flags and chanted that the South would rise again. One message said, “White men are the absolute worst!” and “He should get dragged for it!” Then came the anti-Semitism: “Hitler got something right!”
This was a victimhood arms race. I was cast as a white, male evil-doer who must be shamed and punished for all the white man’s sins. I was unfit to hold office. My economic inclusion work didn’t mean a thing. I was paraded out for a social media stoning, and the social justice mob would stop at nothing.
Everything I had worked for was destroyed, and so was my reputation. I felt unsafe to walk on campus. The other candidates were elected unopposed. They made “misogynoir” their campaign slogan. I had no choice but to drop out of the election race for my physical safety and mental health and leave Nashville for someplace safe.
Vanderbilt’s campaign rules prohibit negative campaigning and ban any remark or attack about a candidate’s personal character. These rules require collegiality and civility, but Vanderbilt stood by while this angry mob weaponized social justice, targeted me, threatened me, and ran me out of town.
I’ve begun to believe that for some of my attackers, social justice is a cover for people who get pleasure from inflicting harm on others — straight-up bullying made a hundred times worse on social media. When did woke culture become so toxic? Some are cowards who hide behind an avatar. I am through being trampled on, but I shouldn’t have to fight back. When the social justice mob came for me, my university did nothing.
Jordan Gould is a student at Vanderbilt University.
