More Reports of Violence, Threats Against Conservative Students

Tom Knighton | 10:04 AM on March 22, 2017

Middlebury College students turn their backs to Charles Murray, unseen, during his lecture in Middlebury, Vt., Thursday, March 2, 2017. Hundreds of college students protested his lecture, forcing the college to move his talk to an undisclosed campus location from which it was live-streamed to the original venue. He still could not be heard above protesters' chants, feet stamping and occasional smoke alarms. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

A wave of dangerous hatred has struck our college campuses.

Conservative students are being assaulted. Conservative students are being intimidated and harassed. It’s easy for the Left to dismiss these cases as isolated, but this report from St. Olaf College in Minnesota reveals just how insidious the problem has become:

According to the Manitou Messenger: “Of the 12 students interviewed … several have been violently threatened because of their political beliefs, and almost all of them feel as though they can’t speak up about politics on campus — in class, online or with their friends.

…

On the night of the election, a student in the Pause threatened to beat up [College Republicans President Emily] Schaller, calling her a ‘f***ing moron.’”

The college newspaper has heard multiple reports of students who “threaten to hurt the next conservative or Republican they saw.”

“I think one of the hardest things was, the second day, I went into Buntrock and someone yelled from the bottom, ‘if you voted for Trump, you better be f***ing scared.’ Everyone clapped and applauded,” recounted Kathryn Hinderaker, vice president of the St. Olaf College Republicans. “Obviously, it didn’t feel super safe.”

One St. Olaf conservative spoke of retreating from all the hostility and she just “went home for awhile” because of it. She said online harassment forced her to transfer to another school with the conclusion of the fall semester.

No one stepped up to say Trump voters didn’t deserve to be scared — to provide them a “safe space.” No one blasted these students for making violent threats. Not staff, not students, nobody.

Why?

There are plenty of reasons someone might not speak up, and fear is a big one. If they’re willing to hurt some nameless, faceless individual — and not all were faceless, since one incident saw pictures of conservative students get circulated with a caption instructing the reader to “remember their faces” — what would they do to someone who challenges them in the moment?

All of these stories, coupled with the riots at Berkeley and Middlebury, illustrate that the Left on college campuses is unhinged, and retreating from the civil society.

College administrators need to step up and confront this menace before someone gets lynched.