If you’ve seen Eliza Byard’s tweet about the way the electoral map would’ve looked if only 18-25 year olds voted in the 2016 presidential election, you probably had one of two reactions. Either your hope in our generation was revitalized because only five states would’ve been red, or you recognized the isolation our generation is placing upon conservatives and the dwindling value of traditional Republican views.
Millennials are becoming increasingly progressive, and to a die-hard liberal like me, that’s a wonderful thing. At our University and colleges along the Bible Belt, the right wing dominates the student body. Conservatives are born and bred here, making it hard for liberals to feel like their voices are heard. That’s why you find them in the basement of Student media’s halls sitting in big circles talking about gay marriage, women’s rights and racial politics.
Well, not really.
But we all tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people to feel more validated. When Donald Trump won the presidential election, it was a shock for many of us. We couldn’t understand how America could take such a huge step back in time and hand the reigns completely to the right. Who even voted for Trump?
It’s easy to say his voter base was made up of uneducated white males in rural areas, but the truth is the people who voted for Trump and whose parents voted for Bush and grandparents voted for Reagan are all around us. They’re our peers, our friends and even our teachers. They got Trump elected. Silently. In the background.
The key to understanding this phenomenon is understanding the people who caused it. We’ve always been divided in our beliefs as a country, closing our ears off to what the other side has to say and being ferocious in our fight for control. This time, we lost. They won. And we can’t just blame the old, traditional white men anymore because the millennials had a say this time, too.
The media plays a large part in perpetuating these divides between us, and there is a huge responsibility that comes with that. It is well understood that conservatives have their news sources like Fox and liberals have the New York Times and CNN. We are all receiving news with the colored lens of our political parties, and it’s reckless.
My dream for Student Media is to have a bipartisan output that expresses all the views of the student body. It’s hard to penetrate the leftist that we and other media outlets have, but as people who must soon assume the responsibility of controlling the infrastructure of this country, we can come together. We, the liberals at The Daily Reveille, invite you to join us for our hiring night, which will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. in the basement of Hodges Hall, in room B22. Come out of the shadows and help us to understand. Like the saying goes, I’ll hug your elephant if you kiss my ass.
Anjana Nair is an 18-year-old international studies sophomore from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.