Was the research group meeting about politics or did this randomly come up during them? And honestly it wouldn’t surprise me for college students to bash Biden as well. Why associate your political beliefs so strongly with one man? Surely someone saying Trump is a criminal business man says nothing about whether your belief on income taxes is legitimate.

Not to say my college experience was typical, but it was largely apolitical. There were student groups for Republicans and Democrats and if you didn’t want anything to do with politics you didn’t have to. I didn’t spend my time discussing politics with my friends, my professors didn’t lecture about how much Bush sucks during their Operating Systems course, and my classmates weren’t bringing up how immoral the Iraq war was during the single philosophy course I took.

I come from a conservative state, the school population would likely have only slightly leaned left. I didn’t feel pressured about my conservative beliefs. Looking back at the time, though, I shifted from center-right to center. Not because of being clubbed over the head in arguments, but from exposure to ideas and experiences and beliefs that my rural upbringing sheltered me from.