By Brandon Sapienza, Contributing Writer
There is no question about the fact that Americans are living in one the harshest political environments in recent memory. In the midst of all this chaos and unrest, the future leaders and workers of America are attending thousands of colleges and universities across the nation. On these campuses and inside the classrooms, these students are currently facing their biggest threat: group thought.
St. Bonaventure is in the same boat. Every freshman is required to take an entire semester of the SBU 101 class followed by SBU 102, Introduction to Diversity, to receive a degree four years later.
In these courses, students are forced to listen to lecturers feed information from Marc Lamont Hill’s book “Nobody,” and how racial and social justice issues seem more prevalent and dangerous than they are.
Ultimately, many freshmen think that this is a way for leftist views to get into the minds of college students. SBU 101 exposes these students to the toxic world of group thought. This is where new ideas and possibilities go to die, where people go to call others bigoted and racist.
“I hate it. It’s too political, and it requires too much work for a mandatory class,” said Mike Gramando, a freshman history major currently enrolled in the class. “There is no need for it. I don’t learn anything important, and it has only taught me to keep my mouth shut, or I’ll be ostracized about my views.”
The big issue in the class is that those with conservative views have almost been censored as their thoughts regarding these political problems are seen as derogatory and bigoted.
“In class, there’s a bad environment,” added freshman environmental studies major Josh Pitman. He claimed that the class was “Not racially diverse.”
As a class concerned with teaching students how to be a member of a community, it also teaches them how to think like the community. It should be considered an outrage for newly independent college students to step into a new world and be greeted by people who are trying to convince them that microaggressions and free speech are a problem.
Colleges and universities pride themselves on the diversity of culture. That is something that should be championed. However, colleges cannot consider themselves diverse unless all thoughts and speech are allowed. Students who pay good money for a higher education should not have to worry about being viewed as evil because they have conservative views. Colleges already are mainly liberal as shown by the Washington Post. It is good that people have opposing views, but a school should not be sponsoring it by having a class made mandatory to create divisiveness and hatred.
sapienbm17@bonaventure.edu
