A few weeks ago, Geneseo’s bi-annual Student Organization Expo took over central campus. For almost three hours, tables covered in flyers, homemade poster boards and merchandise ranging from stickers to pins to pencils, littered the campus.
It was easy for students to become more and more interested in the clubs, putting their names down for a variety of organizations ranging from Music Theater Club to the women’s rugby team. Attendees’ hands were full of information from almost all the tables. Yet, as you walked down the path, it was nearly impossible not to notice the plethora of clubs based around politics and the social climate today.
After talking to the leaders of each of the groups, a question forms: do these clubs have a place on Geneseo’s campus?
In all honesty, it comes down to the way one thinks about political socialization. In America, this encompasses family structure, mass media and what morals you may have been taught to uphold through education. With that being said, what is the inherent use of political clubs on campus and, if they continue to be formed, could that be harmful to the student culture at Geneseo as polarization in the nation becomes more and more rampant?
With global tensions seeming to increase in the last five years, as well as internal polarization within the United States, political clubs could potentially bring that tension right onto campus where the main focus should be an education for the future. This argument has some truth to it but proves problematic when actually put into practice.
Students cannot simply forget the struggles of the political world while on campus since the political world is all-encompassing. Politics can affect every thought and opinion in someone’s head, an ongoing theme in everyone’s lives. The idea that while on campus, students must shunt off our political views in order to learn is not only seeped in apathy but ignorance as well.
Instead of trying to repress political views, society must embrace them and feel free to advocate individual opinions. It is the responsibility of every American to educate themselves on current issues while respecting the differences between groups.
These political clubs are essential to our school’s political landscape. With different groups of likeminded people, the community is able to share their political views with one another, advocate for themselves in a civilized, adult-like manner and learn new ideas one may not have heard before.
Our world is not changed with a single voice or action, but with a movement of likeminded people. So, if you feel up to changing the world you live in now, go out and find other people around Geneseo’s campus to make that change with you. Who knows, you may find success.
Grace Piscani is an English major freshman who likes spending her time reading on the quad and dreaming of a time when nap time was scheduled into her school day.