Kingswood Oxford, as much as we like to pretend it is completely unified, has a divide when it comes to politics. As a private school in Connecticut, we lean towards more democratic and liberal political views due to our location and our upbringings. We’ve created an accepting community for those from all different religious and ethnic backgrounds, as well as sexual orientations.
However, what we have failed to accomplish is giving students who are not diverse in really any way their right to give their opinions on anything related to politics. As much as the school says it is okay to speak up about our views, the student body says otherwise. It is my opinion that if a student disagrees with a certain political view and believes a more conservative perspective, their opinions will be shot down and they feel more intimidated when a topic such as politics is brought up.
Kingswood Oxford has created numerous clubs to make kids feel more welcomed and give them an area of acceptance. But when two students created a club called KO Conservatives Through Economic Diversity and the school approved it, some faculty and students both looked down on it and saw it as wrong. This club tried to give our student body a different perspective to make us better listeners and more open minded. In an attempt to do this, they brought a speaker to our school to give her opinion on civil discourse and how to understand and listen to someone. The student body, however, was not as accepting of the speaker as the speaker was of them. One student even went up during the Q&A portion and didn’t go up with a question, but more with the intent to confront the speaker. This is a problem that we an opinion for a reason, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Some students on campus whose views differentiate from those of their peers will use that view to judge their character. There have been situations where a friend will scream and yell at their other friends until they have bullied them into feeling awful and not wanting to speak. Students will judge others without even knowing who they are just based on if they have a conservative background. The problem is, because we are so young, we don’t understand everything yet, we do not understand how to interact about politics and about how we should listen. People claim they are listening when really they are thinking about why the other is wrong. Students don’t want to be judged by their peers, we are already insecure enough at this age, we don’t need more judgment based on our beliefs.
But it goes both ways at Kingswood, just as much as some liberals don’t want to talk to conservatives, some conservatives don’t want to talk to liberals because they look at them as “crazy” about their beliefs. The main problem is that we are not willing to listen. We want so desperately to be heard that we forget that it is a conversation rather than a speech. We need to accept the fact that we aren’t always going to agree with someone and jamming your idea down their throat won’t help.
Face as a society: there is no right or wrong in politics. It is called an opinion for a reason; everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Some students on campus whose views differentiate from those of their peers will use that view to judge their character. In fact, there have been situations where a friend will scream and yell at their other friends until they have bullied them into feeling awful and not wanting to speak. Students will judge others without even knowing who they are just based on if they have a conservative background. The problem is, because we are so young, we don’t understand everything yet, we do not understand how to interact about politics and about how we should listen.
People claim they are listening when really they are thinking about why the other is wrong. Students don’t want to be judged by their peers, we are already insecure enough at this age, we don’t need more. This execution prevents anyone from being more open minded. Also, something to take into consideration is the fact that we are high school students. We follow the news but we also have to make time for school and for our lives. Not everything we say will be 100% accurate because we don’t pay enough attention to it.
Granted, there are students who watch the news every night and read The New York Times or The Washington Post, but that is a small percentage. Much of what is being said is an exaggeration from what their parents say, so half the information that they are saying, they don’t fully understand but agree with because that is what they are taught.
The moral of this is for our student body to take a look and realize we shouldn’t judge someone based on their political views.
We should be open and listen to, as well as understand what they believe, and accept them for who they are like how KO has tried to teach us.
