Universities’ political positions harms student growth and threatens democracy

By Henry Haden, ‘25

November 8th is fast approaching. For Republicans, this moment represents a chance to take back control of Congress and thwart the Biden agenda of the past two years. If they succeed, it could set the course for a successful 2024. Alternatively, the Democrats may continue controlling Congress with a majority in both chambers.

It is difficult to accurately predict what political events will occur over the next two months. However, what Americans can expect is for the academic administrative complex to continue kneeling to a frustrated left in the event of a major Republican victory.

Back in November 2016 when Donald Trump won the election, there was great civil unrest throughout major metropolitan areas. Many participants in demonstrations both peaceful and violent were college students. At the University of Pittsburgh, hundreds of students took to the streets shouting “Not my president!” At the University of Texas Austin, hundreds of students walked out of class. At UCLA, a crowd of more than 1,500 students tore up a Trump piñata and tried to flip over a car. The question begs to be asked: What led these students to protest the election of Donald Trump? There are myriad explanations.

One less common but important factor was the partisan acts of college administrators in forming novel election response protocols, making safe spaces, and publishing political statements on behalf of entire universities. This led students to believe that something was wrong.

Surely, this was the exception. Not so. In response to the 2016 election, universities immediately implemented programs indicating a state of crisis.

According to The Wall Street Journal, at the University of Michigan, the Play-Doh was quickly deployed. On November 9th, a “steady flow” of undergraduate students could be seen playing with the modeling compound popular with toddlers in the office of multi-ethnic affairs. Coloring books were also available.

Alan Peel, an astronomy lecturer at the University of Maryland did his part by canceling his class for the day. Peel understood the “monumental effort necessary to accept what must be a personally threatening election result.”

Cornell University, an Ivy League institution with a mission “to discover, preserve and disseminate knowledge” and “to educate the next generation of global citizens,” hosted a “cry-in” with school staff providing “tissues and hot chocolate.” Banding together, some students from the University of California, Davis shouted intellectual phrases such as “WE are America!” and “F— Donald Trump!” according to a Washington Post article from the time. 

More recently, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a timely article titled “Trump’s 2016 Victory Sparked Unrest on College Campuses. What Might 2020 Bring?” just before the election that year. According to editor Sarah Brown, the 2016 election caught college campuses “off-guard,” but in 2020 college administrators wanted “to be prepared.”

At the not-too-distant George Washington University, “campus officials emailed students… telling them to stock up on food and other essentials, in case of prolonged election-related unrest in Washington, D.C.” The email said: “We suggest preparing for the Election Day period as you would for a hurricane or a snowstorm that would prevent you from going outside for several days to grab food or order takeout.”

At American University, classes on Election Day were canceled, and the university administrators also took the initiative by creating an “Election Stress Survival Kit.” Universities began formulating these plans as far back as the summer of 2020. 

While many such initiatives are humorous, they reflect a problem that is more of a “threat to democracy” than any recent presidential outcome. All these plans were contingent on the possibility of one election result, a Republican victory. By adopting these protocols, college administrators were saying that there would be something wrong if a Republican won an election.

What might politically unsavvy students conclude if university officials–paid employees of a school–are telling them that classes are canceled the day after an election or that, in light of the election, students will need to undergo “counseling” and “therapy” or even lock their doors? They would feel compelled to do something, but what exactly?

At a minimum, they would presumably become very worried. According to Susan Svrluga of The Washington Post, 2016 was most college students’ “first presidential election. And for many, the response to the results was visceral.”

After the 2016 election, Susan Svrluga summarized UCLA student government president Danny Siegel’s remarks. She writes that Mr. Siegel observed that UCLA was a school where there were some Trump supporters but “no organized group and a very strong anti-Trump leaning for the campus as a whole. The results were such a shock, he said, people didn’t know how to react. He said some students were shaken in their faith in democracy, when their first presidential election produced a result so contrary to their fundamental beliefs, and some were personally devastated, worried about the election’s implications for themselves and their families.”

In a campus bubble where blatant favoritism is shown toward one side, chaos will ensue whenever Republicans win an election. Without this administrative bias, the campus political environment would presumably feel more balanced.

Where were the Play-doh sessions after the 2020 election? Of course, at that time “the spread” had to be stopped, but maybe the real reason was that university administrators saw a Democratic victory as the desirable outcome. Hence, no Play-Doh or therapy dogs.

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University administrators are doing their students a major disservice by allowing political views to influence school policy. In effect, they are failing their proclaimed mission statements.

To make this situation more relevant for Washington and Lee students, take the school mission statement: “Washington and Lee University provides a liberal arts education that develops students' capacity to think freely, critically, and humanely and to conduct themselves with honor, integrity, and civility. Graduates will be prepared for lifelong learning, personal achievement, responsible leadership, service to others, and engaged citizenship in a global and diverse society.”

During the Trump administration, W&L administrators released politically charged “messages to the community” critiquing Republican policies. It is, of course, acceptable for administrators to personally hold these views, but allowing one-directional messaging in the absence of critiquing fallible Democratic policies is not beneficial.

In this case, W&L is failing its mission statement by telling students what to think. With top-down partisan messaging, students are hindered from “thinking freely” if the very academic institution claiming to foster such diverse thinking becomes political.

In effect, the best mode of action for college administrators is for them to stay out of the political arena officially. It is hardly constructive for a group of like-minded people to craft partisan school policy behind closed doors. Transparency should be embraced in the decision-making process, and statements and school policies should either be balanced or stay as apolitical as possible. Openly political discussions are best with dialogue in a classroom.

If classes will be canceled after a Republican victory, they should be canceled after a Democratic victory. Preferably, classes shouldn’t be canceled at all.

The 2022 midterms will serve as a litmus test to determine if universities like Washington and Lee are capable of changing course and equipping students with the tools to be productive and engaged citizens. Regardless of election outcomes, students should be able to forge ahead, and universities should avoid the true “threat to democracy” that is politics communicated in absolute, partisan terms.