Table Talk

The Presidential Inauguration and Its Effect on Campus Relationships and Discourse

written by Amanda Schneider | photographed by Andrea Chen| designed by Thalia Lauzon

The inauguration of President Joe Biden occurred when many college students were still away on their winter vacations, limiting political conversation to either before students went on break or when they came back. Boston University’s offcial website boasts that it has over 40 cultural groups on campus and admits students from over 131 different countries, making it certain that there are groups representing ideologies from all across the world.

There has, however, been instances of clashing ideals between student groups in the time leading up to the election. In September 2020, the Boston University College Republicans (BUCR) posted a photo to their Instagram account regarding recent Tweets from Professor Ibram X. Kendi, director of BU’s Center for Antiracist Research.

On September 26, Kendi had posted on Twitter about now Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her two adopted children from Haiti. In response to his Tweets, the BUCR asked for “the immediate removal of Professor Kendi from any association with Boston University,” citing his language as “outrageous” and “hateful” in their Instagram post.

The post gathered a lot of attention within the BU community, receiving over 700 comments from students. Nearly all of these comments were negative, with many calling for the group to delete both its post and account.

“This statement is a joke,” one student wrote.

“Please use your position as a BU student to educate yourself,” commented another.

For some students, this reaction makes perfect sense. Sophomore Sophia Palumbo said that she hasn’t had any negative personal experiences at BU with someone who held a drastically different point of view.

“[Boston University’s] campus and the people who go here are generally quite liberal, so it doesn’t create a whole lot of dialogue,” she said, adding that most of her friends share very similar political opinions. The comments on the BUCR’s post refects these sentiments, displaying the school’s large leftleaning population.

Although the university does not have any offcial statistics on the student body’s political leanings, BU ranks 11 on Niche’s 2021 list of the Most Liberal Colleges in America.

However, after incidents such as that with the BUCR, some students feel that there has been a growing divide among the BU community, and that this divide was heightened by the 2020 election.

“At a left-leaning school like Boston University, publicly speaking up about supporting Donald Trump or any of his policies completely isolates you,” said Jodee Frias, a junior who had engaged with the College Republicans’ Instagram post.

These sentiments are refected at different schools across the country as well. For Beatrice Phillips, a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., political debates between student groups and on campus are similar to that between the BUCR and BU students.

“There has been an ‘othering,’ or maybe even ‘silencing,’ of students who openly support Trump at George Washington University,” she said. Phillips is a sophomore studying Political Science, and she said that this behavior is especially prevalent within that department.

Phillips said that this othering has led to a “problematic” silencing of Republican students in general, no matter what university they attend. This isolation peaked during the 2020 election season, as tensions between Democrats and Republicans heightened after the events at the United States Capitol on January 6.

Despite this student-led isolation, some believe that is still important to have conversations with those who hold different political opinions.

“The only way to foster change or help spread a message is to have respectable conversations with those you disagree with,” Phillips said.