Conservative students are traditionally underrepresented in student governments across the country, so much so that right-leaning organizations like Turning Point USA and the Leadership Institute have special projects and trainings focused on electing conservatives to student government positions. Unsurprisingly, on the few occasions where conservative students are elected to represent the student body and then actually govern by their conservative principles, all hell breaks loose.
Two examples of this are playing out this fall semester, and the liberal thought police are working overtime to censor students with views that fall outside the liberal norm allowed on campus.
In one instance, the Student Body Vice President at Emporia State University was threatened with impeachment because she posted the phrase “illegal aliens” on Facebook. In another, a University of California, Berkeley, student senator merely abstained on a vote regarding gender identity and is now facing calls to resign.
At Emporia State University in Kansas, student Vice President Michaela Todd wrote a Facebook post endorsing Kris Kobach, the Republican gubernatorial candidate for Kansas.
The now-deleted post, comprised of mainstream Republican talking points, used the same term the United States government uses in federal statutes: illegal alien. It read in part: “Kris Kobach will: Put Kansas first, not illegal aliens.”
Ironically, the Kansas school’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which is run by the student government, lead the charge to impeach Todd, before dropping the impeachment threats altogether in fear of a lawsuit.
“Vice President Todd’s decision to use the term ‘illegal alien’ dehumanizes people we strive to represent,” stated members of ASG’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee in an open letter demanding Todd’s resignation. “We, as a committee, believe no human is illegal.”
“No human is illegal,” the publicly funded institution reasoned.
Todd has since apologized in a statement, saying, “It was never my intent to hurt anyone.”
In California, Berkeley Student Sen. Isabella Chow is facing calls to resign because she is governing on the platform she ran on: her Christian beliefs.
When the UC Berkeley Student Senate put forth a resolution to oppose the recent Title IX changes proposed by the Trump administration, Chow abstained. The resolution was meant to display solidarity with the LGBT community, specifically “transgender, intersex, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students,” according to the Daily Californian.
Chow’s own campus party, Student Action, disavowed her, yet she’s not wavering. She said she did not vote for the bill because doing so would be “compromising [her] values and [her] responsibility to the community that elected [her] to represent them.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Campus Reform, Chow said that she has no intention of resigning, citing the importance of representing her Christian constituents. “There’s a Christian community and campus that has been praying for me and encouraging me throughout all this. And if I don’t represent their views, who else will?”
Meanwhile students are rallying against Chow with banners that read, “Senator Chow Resign Now!”
Todd and Chow are not alone in their experiences. Last Spring, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student Andrew Minik was impeached from his position as chairman of the Committee of Diversity and Inclusion because he organized a memorial wall for victims of illegal aliens.
If using standard legal phrases like “illegal aliens,” practicing one’s Christian beliefs, or honoring murder victims is wrong, why should conservatives want to be politically correct on campus?
