Students come to college to receive a balanced and informative education, but recently universities have become so overtly leftist that the idea of an unbiased college experience is almost an absurdity. The faculty of universities across the country has swung so far left that many people today wonder if there is any space left for intellectual conservatives in America's halls of higher learning.
My first experience with liberal bias in education came when I was told by a teacher that I must be "blind" for having supported George Bush in the 2000 Presidential election. I was surprised this teacher would be so blatant in his view of my politics but not surprised by his response, since he had made his political partiality known earlier in the course. Needless to say I refrained from any further political discussions in class because I feared my grade would be lowered as a result of my teacher's strong prejudice against conservatives.
The fact is that universities are overwhelmingly liberal and the faculties of most universities reflect this strong leftist bias. A study by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture recently showed that only three percent of Ivy League professors considered themselves Republican and only six percent identified themselves as conservative. With these numbers it is not surprising that many conservative students feel overly criticized when expressing their opinions or are unwilling to show their true colors because of the possible effect on their grade.
Students just have to look at Locust Walk or the college green to see the double standard that exists on campus. At the end of the spring semester the College Republicans borrowed an idea from a UCLA conservative group and held an "Affirmative Action Bake Sale" where cookies were less expensive for minorities. Usually demonstrations on the walk are ignored, but this one generated a fair amount of response.
Reactions ranged from humored to offended to one student who I overheard saying "If there weren't so many people around I'd kick the $%#& out of all of them." Maybe I just haven't been listening enough recently, but I have never heard anyone get so incensed over a pro-choice demonstration or a College Democrats event. By its very nature the bake sale was intended to be provocative but the reaction from the students I witnessed just confirmed what I always thought: if you are liberal free speech is a constitutional guarantee, but if you're conservative you should shut your mouth, at least on college campuses.
Thankfully the majority of my professors have been open-minded and respected any and all views during class discussions. I have rarely been afraid to voice my opinions but I have also rarely heard a professor support a conservative or Republican idea. I may be overly optimistic, but I have faith that the majority of Penn professors do their best to remove political bias from their lectures and to respect all students' opinions, but if only six percent of professors consider themselves conservative how can this university accurately describe itself as fair and open to all views?
This school's admissions department tries to bring a balance of nationalities, ethnic groups, religions, gender, sexuality, and races in each incoming freshman class. Perhaps the university administration and faculty responsible for hiring professors should expand this mission to include professors that accurately reflect the diaspora of political opinion.
I am not arguing for an affirmative action program for hiring Republican professors, but I think it is time for Penn to question the direction it is going in as a university. Penn offers a tremendous amount of courses on important topics such as feminism, gender identity, sexuality, and race and I wholeheartedly support these programs. But maybe we have gone too far in the process of opening our minds and forgotten that there are students who would prefer more conservative options when it comes time to pick classes or at least not a blatantly liberal curriculum.
The fact is that many of the students here will go on to become important members of the world's political, economic, social, and educational institutions. If the education we receive here does not accurately reflect that there are two sides to every issue then our graduates will resemble liberal talking heads rather than informed citizens.
