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Life on a US campus What is MAGA’s impact on the next generation of US Leaders?

Katherine Santini, a university student from the US, examines pro and anti-Trump sentiment on campus and finds few students willing to voice their opinions.

THE BIG, BEAUTIFUL Bill’s narrow passage in Congress and the “No Kings” protests in which millions of Americans took to the streets to defy a 250-year military parade sheds light on just how polarising the current presidential administration is in the United States.

With Harvard University at the forefront, administrators and students are taking a stance against President Trump’s hard-line policies, most notably the elimination of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programmes.

This, however, is just one of many policies driving a wedge between Americans.

As an undergraduate student at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, I can speak to the diverse feelings the present administration has sparked on campus. While the media’s spotlight on Harvard’s legal pushback and Palestine protests across college campuses might portray the majority of college-aged Americans as left-leaning, polls from the 2024 election reveal that 47% of young voters aged 18 to 29, voted for the current president.

This is a notable increase from the 37% of young voters who supported Trump in the 2016 election. Little by little, a right wave has been taking hold of the youth. But how evident is this on a Catholic liberal arts college campus?

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This past semester, the College of the Holy Cross was proud to host one of its best-known alumni – Dr Anthony Fauci of the Class of 1968 – for a residency, where he headlined a series of events intended to encourage dialogue among students.

At one session, his fellow panellist surmised that many of the students in attendance were left-leaning and inquired whether their beliefs represent the majority of the student body. I responded to him as candidly as I could, stating that while there are a number of outspoken students and professors, plenty of whom express left-leaning sentiments, there seems to be a silent majority on campus that keeps our institution from making headlines.

Holding back views

As an active member of the debate club and student-led newspaper, The Spire, it did not initially dawn on me that the majority of students are either apolitical or hesitant to profess their beliefs. Todd Rado, co-founder of the College’s Social Justice Collective and regular editor of The Spire, pointed out that, “Holy Cross is a bourgeois campus…

Because of a recent tuition raise, students can expect to pay $88,000 out of pocket per year, $90,000 if they’re in an apartment. That kind of privilege and investment in capitalism doesn’t make passionate activists, to say the least. It causes most to say, ‘I’ve got mine. Why should I care about everyone else?’”

henry-m-hogan-campus-center-at-college-of-the-holy-cross-in-worcester-massachusetts-ma-usa College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts MA. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Fellow editor of The Spire, Edward Scott, concurred that, “the broad majority of students simply remain quiet so as to either avoid being controversial or simply aren’t interested” and admitted not knowing “the politics of any of my previous roommates and only know[ing] the basics of what… my closest friends believe. It’s just simply not worth the stress when we could instead be discussing the newest season of Severance, which Adam Sandler movie is the best, or why the New York Mets are definitely going to win.”

In my experience, negligence, fear and even shame can stop students from owning up to their beliefs. I have encountered several instances where friends have been apathetic toward hotly contested political debates, and others where I have been told to keep a friend’s politics “hush-hush.”

no-kings-protest-against-the-trump-administration-in-midtown-manhattan Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Conversely, though, I have been stunned by fellow students’ outspoken passion in political science classes, debates and newspaper articles. Like any institution of higher learning, an array of attitudes toward the current presidential administration can be found at Holy Cross. Your personal perception of campus politics often depends on the niche you find yourself in.

Jesuit values

Ben Lepper, The Spire’s editor-in-chief this past academic year, shared that “I’ve witnessed some pretty ugly arguments about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the recent presidential election, and that’s honestly pretty disappointing to me.” Lepper elaborated that on a Jesuit campus, “you have traditionalist Catholics who are often headline conservatives…[and] on the other, you have Jesuits and other liberal Catholics, who often lean the opposite way politically.”

He concluded, however, that “most people I knew were not fans of the new administration, including the majority of my professors last year. I would chalk this up to the fact that the school was founded on Jesuit values — values that the current administration does not stand for.”

The assumption that students and professors are generally anti-Trump is where many Democrats this past election cycle went wrong. They were in denial over the sizeable swathe of college-aged Americans who harbour conservative ideas. Juan Cortes-Hernandez, an editor of the college’s conservative newspaper, the Fenwick Review, cites this reality and opines that, “the publication…stood out to me as a forum for intellectual discussion and the promotion of ideals you don’t often hear on college campuses.”

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While Cortes-Hernandez praises his cast of writers and calls them “brave” for championing seemingly unpopular ideals, he ultimately feels that “there is a large right-leaning contingent of the student body; students who disagree with our institution’s use of certain progressive ideas, or even some political opinions from our Jesuits [yet] many are not outspoken in their stances.” He concluded that “among our age group, and nationally, I do think a large rightward shift is initiating. I have no idea how deeply our campus will be impacted, but given the varied nature of our college political landscape, I do think some overt shifts will become visible.”

Perhaps the least acknowledged group of students on campus are those who come from conservative upbringings. As Rado points out, “conservatives [on campus] are happy [while] liberals are hoping Trump will just sort of skip over our quiet campus…”

For this reason, it is difficult to get an exact reading on my campus’s political alignment, which goes for many other universities across the United States. In future elections, Republican and Democratic candidates can better gauge young people’s political leanings through privately polling third-level institutions, rather than relying on major news stories to speak for all young people.

Regardless of those currently in power, America’s future ultimately rests on the shoulders of the youth, whose proper education in politics is crucial. While it can be tempting to restrict political talk to certain spaces on campus, what institutions of higher learning should fear the most is fostering widespread apathy among those who will inherit today’s problems.

Katherine Santini is halfway through a Bachelor of Arts degree specialising in History and Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross. She is Chief News Editor of the student-run newspaper, The Spire, and intends to pursue a career in journalism upon graduating.

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