It was March 28th – Ivy Day 2024 – and the culmination of all my time and effort in high school. I was in awe of the opportunity presented to me. Princeton felt like something I could only dream about, but nothing I could ever actually achieve. Reading my acceptance letter, I no longer had to convince Princeton to accept me. Now, the shoe was on the other foot: Princeton had to convince me.
I committed to Princeton because of the support I experienced during this period. During Princeton Preview and beyond, people spoke highly of the programs and resources available to students. As my tour guide put it, if in need of money, “Make Princeton pay!” Originally, I was worried about committing to Princeton because information technology, my principal academic interest, was not an explicit course of study on offer. However, after emailing professors in the Computer Science Department to voice my concerns, I was amazed at the responses I received. All of them replied, assuring me that Princeton would help me reach the IT field even if it was not my major. The professors’ willingness to speak with me about my interests and goals made Princeton feel like the right place. I accepted my offer, believing that the Princeton community would support me despite any difficulties I might encounter.
Orientation week reaffirmed my feeling that Princeton overflowed with resources and guidance. The community of fellow freshmen I met in the first week felt comforting. I remember feeling supported when other students offered me directions when I did not yet know how to navigate campus. In the Butler Lounge, people helped me plan for the upcoming semester and the best way to accomplish my long-term goals.
I built personal connections with my peers. We had fun and laughed together, reminisced about our hometowns, and shared our goals and dreams. I soon felt so comfortable with them that I started to reveal my difficulties with mental health and my struggle with things like impostor syndrome. In one particular case, I vividly remember having a panic attack in front of my friend, and his caring words helped to alleviate my symptoms. When I had a panic attack in front of my roommates, their first reaction was all the same: “How can I help?” Orientation showed me that Princeton students could make me feel at home.
This attitude changed when I voiced my conservative values. I grew up in a suburban town outside Philadelphia. It was a mix of urban liberals and traditional Republicans, split by I-95. I grew up around various political bubbles that collided all the time. My political beliefs came from my Catholic Italian-American family. Both of my parents come from hard-working blue-collar families, and I’m the first in my family to attend college. Through my dad’s small business, I have seen the difficulties owners like him can face chasing the American dream, but also the upward mobility it provides to all those who dare to take the plunge.
After revealing my beliefs at Princeton, however, I was chastised, criticized, and ostracized by the only people I knew in what was then a new environment. After I made those comments, some individuals sought me out for political discussions in which they could prove to me that I was the problem with this country. Some people stopped talking to me. Some even twisted my beliefs to make me seem like an idiot or a fascist. I was afraid to come out of my shell around others on campus. I was shocked and hurt that this supportive community was so fragile.
I was told during Orientation that Princeton is made up of people from many different places, and that is part of its beauty and ingenuity. My fellow freshmen seemed to share this sentiment, believing we should exit our “algorithmic echo chambers” by engaging with different ideas. Simultaneously, however, fellow students warned me that if I expressed my conservative values in forums like the Tory, people would refuse to talk to or help me. As I struggled to adjust to college-level work, I immediately felt alone and ostracized from a community I was assured would be tolerant. My dean communicated the same message in our one-on-one meetings: “All types of people are accepted to Princeton and have a place here.” I was angry and upset by the hypocrisy of Princeton; we attended multiple Orientation events about free speech on campus and the importance of respecting other people’s points of view. I thought the Princeton community would be there for me regardless of my beliefs. How wrong I was.
I began to avoid others for fear that bitter arguments would arise. I sought support from one of the few people who seemed tolerant of my conservative views despite disagreeing with them. But after I told one friend that I planned to vote for Donald Trump in the election, I was attacked more strongly than before. One student said I shouldn’t travel back home to vote by jokingly saying, “Trump will win anyway, you can stay at Princeton.” I had another fellow student, who I had never spoken to, approach me on the street and flip me off while yelling “Fuck you Trumpy!” On election night, I received a text from a friend asking me to come hang out with him in a lounge near my dorm. Upon my arrival, people, who I had never met, screamed such profanities as “Get the fuck out” and “We don’t want you here!” I never imagined I would be attacked for holding a different set of values.
Based on my experience with fellow students in my first semester, I know that the Princeton community is not always as welcoming or supportive as it pretends to be. Sometimes, it is an environment that only welcomes elite progressives. If you fall outside that group, you can be labeled an “idiot, uninformed, and irresponsible” person, as some of my peers did to me. Ostracizing others for their opinions instead of engaging with them in the spirit of open dialogue and truth-seeking directly undermines the mission of the university, and by extension, undermines being a true Princetonian.
Shunning members of the Princeton community, simply on the basis of their beliefs, threatens the very ethos of being a Princetonian by precluding our collective pursuit of knowledge. How can we learn from each other as a community if we cannot communicate civilly? By invalidating conservative points of view, our campus culture undermines its truth-seeking mission– the echo chambers we build prevent us from seeking viewpoints beyond our own. If Princeton values diversity of thought, and the community claims to support that, then freshmen should apply that same value to their personal interactions.
The good news in my case is that, regardless of the struggles I may have endured in the first semester, I have found my own Princeton community. Members of the Tory have really made Princeton feel like home again. They are always willing to sit down and offer me some upperclassman advice or just chat. Not only has the Tory provided me with a fulfilling community, but the people I’ve met this semester in my courses engage in dialogue with me without devaluing me. I urge anyone who feels alone and cast out by the Princeton community, like I was, to remember you are not alone and don’t lose your spark.
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