“I miss them,” Kieghan Nangle, a 21-year-old student, recalls the dispute that occurred last spring between her friends and her former sorority sisters at the University of Alabama. “I thought our friendship was stronger than our discrepancy in political beliefs,” she says, but one of her friends replied, “If we were to stay friends, I’d need you to never discuss politics ever again.” For Nangle, a conservative student who argues that only those assigned female at birth should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, it is “not reasonable. It seems as though the violation was preceded by an event at which Nangle was among the organization students who became organizers of the event for Riley Gaines, a collegiate swimmer who filed a complaint about the NCAA’s plan regarding transgender competitors. The athlete argued that the organization violated their Title IX rights when it included transgender woman Lia Thomas in the team, and the organizer, in turn, reported that she had been invited to appear on television. This was the “first time it suddenly sank in that it was all over,” the gal said. “They didn’t like the fact that I went on Fox News to declare that men have no place in women’s sports. They said it was “cursed by people they love.” Born and raised in Texas, she said that her views are both Christian and family-oriented, and she is, among other things, opposed to abortion. Nangle is busy working for Trump’s reelection campaign, specifically for the Republican National Committee. She said that in a traditional college year, her work would be based on the weekends in Iowa in hopes of avoiding rebuttals to her conservative views. “I knew I was conservative, but I was always anxious when it came to political communication,” Nangle says, with sound of anxiety.
There had to be some social repercussions for expressing my views, even if Nangle lived in Alabama, a red state where abortion is illegal. “I really do believe in having think skin and being able to hear things you don’t like while still caring about someone at the end of the day”. I am sure that other conservative women in college share the same experiences, with the vast majority of their peers holding different views of morality. A poll conducted in January 2024 by Glamour and YouGov showed that 60% of women in the 18-29 age group who plan to participate in the November elections and are registered as a voting member plan to vote for the Democratic candidate, compared to 40% who have made a resolute decision to vote for the Republican candidate. This is significantly more than the average ratio of 53% of women who have made a resolute decision to vote for a Democratic candidate. Socially, college life can be extremely challenging for young conservative women. One might assume that the 2024 campus is full of student protests and social and voting activism, as the past year has been marked by especially turbulent events, and the next elections will be heavily depending on the young voters. Regardless of whether the results will allow the former President Trump to regain the White House, or will the Presidency be occupied by his critical opponent Vice-President Harris. Therefore, both parties are trying their best to appeal to the young hotspurs, as there are 41 million of voter-eligible Gen Z members. The reality, however, seems more complex. For the past two years, I have been traveling around the United States and speaking to nearly half a thousand young people who are about to participate in the 2024 presidential elections. What I have seen, alongside massively heated political discussions, was also a significant degree of disappointment.
From talking to college students from all around the country, it seems to be that campus culture is at an all-time low. Issues like the war in Gaza, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights have polarized many left-leaning students and many of them also feel disenfranchised; they feel that politicians are not addressing their concerns, and even the Democrats are not doing enough. In the same vein, many of the students who identify as right-leaning similarly feel as though they cannot speak out and that politicians are not doing enough to speak for them; the constant vilification of them also pushes them deep into their corners. At the same time, it seems to be that in America as it stands today, there is a small group of young people who still find themselves in the middle, young people who do not want to spend their best years fighting a political battle or lament the death of moderate discourse that is sorely lacking these days. Seeing that they do not fall into any easy category seems to keep these young people off the priority list for political leaders and university administrators who instead focus on both Partisan extremes.
The result: a political apathy that could prove to be extremely dangerous in the years to come. According to the latest Glamour/YouGov poll, just 56 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds are registered to vote and say they are going to cast a ballot. That’s by far the lowest percentage for any age group. At the time of the poll, 25 percent of them were still undecided about who they would vote for if the election were held today.
“When it came to Israel-Palestine, it was completely different. It was so, so charged.”
Claudia Nachega
Claudia Nachega is a Democrat and a second-year student at Barnard College in NYC, who shares servers left-wing political views with many other students I interviewed. She is “so thrilled about Kamala Harris” becoming the candidate for president. She also partakes in Columbia University’s Christian Union and its Catholic Ministry and is one of the organizers in the pro-Palestine movement. Her position on Israel’s war in Gaza and her activist group’s participation in a university encampment last spring “strained” some of the relations, Nachega says, with the religious community’s students, most notably her like-minded friend she bonded with over the interest in the foreign policy. “He was like, ‘I’m so happy that you’re so rational, and I can see where you’re coming from, you’re coming from a great place… but when it comes to Israel-Palestine, it’s completely different. It’s just different. It’s Israelis and Palestinians, and that’s the end of the conversation.’ It was so charged,” remembers Nachega, ““I tried not to take it personally… but I felt I was talking to a wall,” she complains, “With Palestine, it’s like there’s absolutely no middle ground. So he thought I was brainwashed, and I thought he was brainwashed, and neither of us accepted that.”
“College campuses are supposed to be a place where you challenge each other’s ideas… And I feel like a lot of people don’t embrace that.”
Lucy Cox
Nachega describes what some students feel is at stake. “ I don’t think students going through these kinds of difficulties with relationships are particularly focused on having lost friends over politics; they’re more concerned with Columbia’s complicity in these issues,” she says. The implication is that many students believe their university has a role to play in upholding certain values, which might extend beyond Israel’s war in Gaza. “ Young people, especially Gen Z, have built such strong political power that we’ll do anything we can with our resources to effect what we see as [positive] change,” says Nachega, who identifies as a feminist activist. “ A lot of us, even just as students, [spoke] to this kind of political activism and theory of change that we already had in mind when we applied to these schools, and they admitted us.”
Not everyone, however, is comfortable with pressure to engage with university protest. “ Everyone is expected to take a stance on an issue, especially if you’re in the political science or humanities departments,” says Lucy Cox, a junior at the University of California, Berkeley, studying political science and history. Cox, 20, who identifies as “a bit more on the conservative side,” resents this pressure to broadcast her beliefs, even on social media. “ I think people are starting with politics first and then becoming friends.” While Cox is involved on campus as the president of the Berkeley chapter of BridgeUSA, a youth movement aimed at countering political polarization, she has a hard-and-fast personal rule: “ I never post about politics, ever.” She says her leadership position on campus and her refusal to be loud about her politics are sometimes at odds: “ It’s definitely a balancing act.” In the end, however, it was enough to dissuade her from running for the student senate, even though friends were insistent she would be great. “ I know my entire record would be scrutinized—who I’ve worked for in the past, who I’ve followed.” The social shaming she experiences, Cox says, especially from the left, has had the precise opposite of its intended effect; it has driven her, an “old-school Republican,” further into her beliefs. “ I always say I went more conservative when I went to Berkeley because it wasn’t even worth it to listen to the other side,” she says. “ It made me more confident [in my beliefs] because I knew if someone [wanted] to bring it up, we would have to have an argument.” And, to avoid that, she’s learned who she can really hang out with. “ Freshman year was definitely an adjustment, figuring out who I could talk to and who I couldn’t,” Cox says. “ But by sophomore year, I could generally find having fun on campus [was easier] and I felt included… That’s because I knew which relationships to build.” Cox hates that she has to be so guarded. “College campuses are supposed to be a place where people’s ideas are challenged, where people are open to hearing what others have to say,” she says. “A place where you can roam around and have a great time. And I feel like many people don’t.”
“One of my friends belongs to a Black sorority on campus, and some of her sorority sisters were like, ‘I don’t know how you’re friends with her.’”
Ellie Porte
Cox is undecided about the coming elections. Her primary issues are foreign policy and “culture issues”. She sees her classmates as radical and “I’m very worried about my generation,” she says. Isabel Hiserodt 21, is the chair of the Young Democrats on campus at Arizona State University. Her experiences of being politically active have been primarily positive. Most of the “tension” on campus was not from other students. “There was never any real student opposition”, she says, reflecting again how measured their generation often feels compared to life on campus. Jared Taylor — the prominent white advocate — speaking at the University, Hiserodt and the rest of the Young Democrats published a statement against his appearance. When asked why, Hiserodt is clear that her issue is with the violent rhetoric, not the repression of free speech.
“ By allowing speakers who espouse xenophobic and racist rhetoric, you’re putting your students who are in the most at-risk, marginalized communities, in danger,” Hiserodt argues. “I think the university should have drawn the line between free speech and hate speech, Taylor’s rhetoric fell under the latter”.
This reality FR Akhter found especially vexing considering that the university justified organizing the event as part of its commitment to free speech. “I don’t really understand because I’ve seen with other people who have been invited to campus, the administration looks for any reason to cancel it, and they cancel events so swift,” Hiserodt explains. “Yet for some reason, we have so many student organizations saying that they don’t want a white nationalist on campus, and it didn’t really feel like we were listened to.” While she is personally unhappy about not being heard, the young woman knows that Arizona is attracting attention as the elections are only days away—and young people in Arizona could be pivotal for this state. “There are so many eyes on Arizona, and the Arizona youth vote in particular, because Arizona youth were the reason that Joe Biden did so well in our state in the previous election,” she says.
I cannot even imagine how exciting is it to be leading the organization in such a pivotal state. “I’ve met some of my best friends through political engagement, which is awesome. It’s given me a new community.” However, it is vital to remember that not everyone is as involved in politics as the president of Young Democrats: “For people who aren’t personally involved with it, it can be probably a bit of a nuisance to interact with so much political action and people approaching you every day.” It might also affect the way students interact with each other. According to a youth poll from Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics conducted in spring 2024, 29% of college students have revealed they are uncomfortable expressing their political opinions on campuses out of fear of a backlash or censorship. This number is more than two times as high as the one recorded in 2015, before the first term of President Trump. During this 2015 survey, only 13% of young people admitted they felt uncomfortable or afraid expressing their political views on a college campus. The poll also stressed that young people who identified themselves as Democrats were significantly more comfortable expressing their view on campuses in comparison to their Republican and independent peers.
Eventually, the hatred of conservative views on campus pushed most students who profess these ideas toward fighting for their First Amendment rights. Free speech is the most important value for Ellie Porte, a conservative who graduated from American University in Washington, DC. “That comes from college,” she admits. Once, her friend’s sorority sister called their friendship into question because of the other girl’s political orientation and even race. “One of my best friends, she’s also Black and she belongs to a Black sorority on campus. And there were some of her sorority sisters who were like, ‘I don’t really understand how you’re friends with her,’” Porte reports. “People would say that I’m not Black enough, because I have white parents as well, so I’m adopted, and because of what I believe in.” These parents Porte grew up are now divorced and have split without disbursement because of their very different political views. They offered their daughter to form her own opinion. “They would always get into debates with each other, and they would always be like, ‘What do you think, Ellie?’” she recalls. “So by the time I got to AU, I did know that I was more conservative. I think partially it was [because] I went to an all-girls school in Virginia, and a lot of the girls there were more conservative leaning,” she points out. In American, Porte served as the only woman on the board of the college Republicans’ student chapter and cooperated with the Network of Enlightened Women, a conservative female organization on college campuses.
Porte notes that she was fortunate to have a friend at American who stood by her even though they could not make their opinions coincide. She argues that she got much by being “exposed” to numerous opinions over four years, but most importantly, her time at campus finally “solidified” her political opinion. Over her college years, Porte felt that she had become “less tolerant” of what she called campus conservatives. “I’m never going to compromise my values because other people don’t agree with it.”
The division at campus roots in part in how personal politics is for students, and many of them would agree, as do Nangle, Nachega, and many others I had interviewed over the past two years. “The length to which our generation will go with the personal attacks on both sides and ad hominem attacks is only going to continue stoking the fires of the polarization we’re seeing now,” Cox adds.
“I wish I could say I was allowed to be a student again. But there is that peer pressure of, ‘Oh, you’re not paying attention to this? You’re not doing anything?’”
Jahnavi Kirkire
There is a reluctance among young women in a politically altered landscape, especially those who are not tied to traditional party labels. The attention among this generation of the dual-party system might be because of the stigma attached to the two existing parties and the dissatisfaction that arises from their divisiveness. The evidence from surveys shows that across all the studied ages, young women are least likely to adopt party labels, with 29% of women under 30 claiming to have no affiliation. However, the fact that colleges do not necessarily house the most political students often goes unmentioned when the only voices that young people hear are incessantly extreme. The situation chafes for Jahnavi Kirkire, a senior at the University of Maryland, College Park, and already a registered independent associated with BridgeUSA. Recruitment of college students for different parties has rendered the liberal Kirkire befuddled. “I’ve gotten that people feel uncomfortable when they hear other political opinions, which is a little disheartening. It’s become more hush-hush sharing your opinions.”
Another aspect of the campus that Kirkire loathes is the binary notion that the grand narrative of politics forces upon them. “It makes politics feel very binary. Like there’s a yes or a no, and there’s a right and a wrong answer.” Then, the ripple effects are already visible in her student life, as well, and Sports and Exercise Science major mourns that, “I wish I could say I was allowed to be a student again. But there is that peer pressure of, ‘Oh, you’re not paying attention to this? You’re not doing anything?’ I feel that I’ve lost the ability to be a carefree student. Finding moments of joy is extraordinarily difficult when your campus feels like it’s internally ideologically warring with itself.” The broader effects of suppressing moderate views through self-censorships are already being experienced. The above points hinder the possibilities of critically exploring and understanding issues that really matter, such as the impact of young people’s choice in the 2024 election. Hopefully, Kirkire’s potential decision will inform someone about how many more young people like her will also give up their freedom to vote before the next U.S. presidential election.
