For college students, the presidential\u00a0campaign seems like a far-off land where a rich bigot and two career politicians are in a street brawl for the GOP nomination, and the two Democratic candidates, one an \u201cemail-deleter\u201d and the other a \u201csocialist,\u201d are politely disagreeing over the path to the same goals.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to argue that assumption is dead wrong \u2013 especially in the case of Donald J. Trump. At first glance, one might think these campaigns won\u2019t impact college students until the first Tuesday of November.<\/span><\/p>\n Sorry, Donald Drumpf. (I\u2019ll get it right next time, John Oliver<\/a>. I promise).<\/span><\/p>\n Most notably, I can see his words and his beliefs reflected in our own UW-Whitewater students through numerous issues with campus climate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ve had people dropping the n-word on Snapchat and residence hall bulletin boards like they\u2019ve suddenly been possessed by racist ghosts of our country\u2019s past.<\/span><\/p>\n Now we have more people taking to Snapchat to record someone using a mobility device, struggling to get around snow-covered walkways. It\u2019s obviously a funny joke to whoever posted it, as they place the \u201ccrying-and-laughing\u201d emoji over the video.<\/span><\/p>\n Since when is someone having a difficult time getting around a joke?\u00a0<\/span>Since Trump decided to throw his toupee (or whatever his hair is) in the ring for presidency, that\u2019s when.<\/span><\/p>\n In the past nine months, he has attacked individuals of the black, Latino and Asian ethnicities. He has proposed a ban of all Muslims from entering the United States. He has gone after women, most notably Megyn Kelly, for having \u201cblood coming out of everywhere\u201d when she challenged him on his answer in a debate.<\/span><\/p>\n He said on ABC\u2019s \u201cthe View\u201d he\u2019d date his daughter Ivanka if she wasn\u2019t, you know, half of his DNA.\u00a0<\/span>A few months ago, he mocked a journalist with a disability. Last month, he refused to condemn the KKK on \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d until receiving national pressure to later do so.<\/span><\/p>\n Think about our own campus climate now. Is any of this starting to hit home just a little too hard? Might Trump\u2019s behavior be rubbing off onto a country, one that was formerly known for freedom and righteousness?<\/span><\/p>\n As I watched former Royal Purple News Editor Alexandria Zamecnik write her stories about campus, she never had to write about UW-W students mocking the disabled, or racism to the point where the Huffington Post wrote about our discrimination. We as a staff never had to write about the campus climate. Granted, it was happening because microaggression is everywhere, but not at this rate.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t even think the news editor before the two of us, Michael Riley, had to sift through issues like this. While Zamecnik and Riley both had continual controversies they wrote about that defined their careers as news editor, mine is going to be defined by campus-wide political unrest and bigotry.<\/span><\/p>\n And I think Trump is to blame for that. He\u2019s proven to the country that one can still rise to the top of the polls while being an \u201ceverything-ist\u201d pig.<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s proven this to the country and Whitewater students. It leads people to think it\u2019s acceptable to mock others and deepen divisions.<\/span><\/p>\n Enough is enough. As a campus, we need to decide that, no matter our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion or ability, we don\u2019t approve of this campus climate \u2013 and this national climate.<\/span><\/p>\n We need to go out to the polls on April 5 for the primary election, and vote for a candidate \u2013 from either side of the aisle \u2013 who doesn\u2019t act like a schoolyard bully, encouraging others to act just like him.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not who we are as individuals, and certainly not who we are as a campus. Knock it off with the discrimination already.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For college students, the presidential\u00a0campaign seems like a far-off land where a rich bigot and two career politicians are in a street brawl for the GOP nomination, and the two Democratic candidates, one an \u201cemail-deleter\u201d and the other a \u201csocialist,\u201d … Continue reading