Conservative students at St. Olaf College, a small college located in Minnesota, are keeping their mouths shut in light of the election of Donald Trump due to the political backlash by their colleagues and professors. At least one student transferred due to this political harassment.
Per the Manitou Messenger:
Former student Katie Ivance also felt unsafe in the days surrounding the election.“The week around the election, right after, I could not go to class. I didn’t feel safe, I actually went home for awhile,” Ivance said. In her Spanish class, “people were like, ‘you’re awful, you’re racist, you’re this, you’re that,’” she said.Ivance noted that the insults continued on social media.“People were saying [things] like ‘F-you’ and ‘I wish you were dead,’” she said. Ivance isn’t the only one who has faced harassment online due to political beliefs. On Feb. 18, a student posted an unsolicited photo of a group of students that supposedly included Trump supporters and encouraged fellow students to “remember their faces.”Ivance transferred to the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities after the fall semester, citing harassment as her primary reason for transferring.