full image - Repost: A non-white Libertarian's honest take on campus culture at the U of MN — the realities no one wants to say out loud. (from Reddit.com, A non-white Libertarian's honest take on campus culture at the U of MN — the realities no one wants to say out loud.)
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First and foremost:I want to establish something very important; I'm a minority, and I'm not White. I didn't grow up in the suburbs like some of you did. I grew up in poverty-stricken, crime-affected areas, around people who took violent paths in their lives. I've been in the foster system, juvenile detention system, jail system, and I've experienced systemic oppression, police corruption, and elitist control first hand. Importantly, I've been robbed and targeted by people from my own community, my own ethnic group, my own skin-color. I've lived the realities that a lot of White campus activists only read about in theory, and then pretend to be 'experts' about.But I'm not asking for pity, or sympathy, no- This post serves as a critique against the hyper-sensitivity, virtue singlism, and hypocrisy this college community creates, and how it isolates other people similar to me from building genuine connections, or being comfortable with expressing their ideas.Not only that, just a genuine critique against the cancel culture, surveillance and ignorance a lot of our peers have here. So let me be blunt about what I've observed at this university:On performative activism:Campus activism here has largely become a performance, and not even a convincing one.Whether it's Palestine, domestic inequality, or crime — the loudest voices are almost always the most disconnected from the actual issues. It's telling that the people most aggressively opinionated about poverty and oppression are the same ones who've never had to actually live inside either.Occupying university buildings, vandalizing property, intimidating faculty (see: Morrill Hall), and silencing actual students of oppression doesn't help the people you claim to advocate for. Because to be real; it only alienates potential allies, discredits legitimate causes, and at the end of the day, accomplishes exactly nothing except getting your name in the student paper and feeding whatever savior complex drove you there in the first place. Real advocacy is unglamorous. It's local. It's slow. It doesn't get you likes, nor attention. What's happening on this campus isn't advocacy; it's cosplay. It's people who discovered injustice exists, got really excited about having an identity around it, and decided that being loud was the same as being useful.If you genuinely cared about inequality, you'd be engaging with it directly — volunteering, organizing, doing the boring work that actually moves things. Instead, a lot of our community disrespect the sanctity of activism by conflating it with dorm room manifestos, performative outrage, and protest aesthetics, which are solely carefully curated for social clout, and community singlism.On crime:Crime is real, it's adjacent to this campus, and pretending otherwise is dangerous. Dinkytown, West Bank, Marcy Holmes, areas around transit stations, these aren't safe by default, especially at night.This isn't fearmongering. It's situational awareness. Don't walk alone at night. Don't flash valuables. Know your surroundings.Dismissing this as the truth is so stupid, because the instinct to dismiss crime concerns as 'reactionary' or 'bigoted' actively endangers students, especially those who are newer to urban environments and don't know what to watch for. Acknowledging crime patterns isn't prejudice. Ignoring them because they're politically uncomfortable is negligence. Straight up, willful negligence dressed up as virtue.And the Safe U description policy? Genuinely one of the dumbest, most self-congratulatory decisions this administration has ever made, and that's a competitive field.Let me spell it out slowly for whoever supports this stupid-ass policy: a physical description exists so people can identify a threat and protect themselves. That is the whole job. You have one job. And you fumbled it to score points with people who will never be satisfied with you anyway.Here's a real scenario; and I want you to actually think about this instead of reaching for your usual talking points: If someone from my own racial group robs me, and I want their full description in the Safe U alert so other students don't become the next victim, are you genuinely going to sit there and call me racist? Me? The person who just got robbed robbed by another person of my own racial and ethnic group?You're going to lecture the victim, the non-white person about sensitivity?Take a second and listen to how stupid that sounds.You're not protecting anyone with that policy. You're protecting yourself from a uncomfortable conversation while real, normal people walk around with incomplete information about an active threat. And the be real; that's not compassion. That's cowardice with a diversity sticker on it.Complete descriptions protect students. Incomplete ones protect criminals.Pick a side.Invest in your own safety. Learn about your legal right to self-defense. Vote yes on campus carry and anti-rape reform with real due process protections.You don't know what the word 'fear' is until you're the one looking down the barrel of a gun, while some piece of shit jacks your shit. Save the 'critical race theory' for the clowns stuck in the echo chamber, because real life doesn't wait for you to feel comfortable. On university surveillance:Let me be real with you. The U is watching you. Right now. On their WiFi. They're logging every site you visit, every search you make, and they will absolutely use that against you if it ever becomes convenient for them.That's not paranoia, that's their actual policy, and if you're shocked by that, you probably should've read what you agreed to before you connected.And don't even get me started on the student body. Because it ain't just the university you gotta worry about. There are students here - and y'all know exactly who I'm talking about - who are out here running full surveillance operations on their fellow classmates like they work for the feds. Screenshotting your posts, documenting your activities, digging through your entire social media history going back to 2020, building little dossiers on you because your politics, ideas, personal life activity make them feel some type of way. Then they run that information straight to OCS or UMPD with the biggest smile on their face, thinking they're doing something heroic.To the people I'm addressing who do this, and engage in this cyber-surveillance behavior: You're not a hero. Nah. You're a snitch - the lowest of the low. Dress it up however you want: "accountability," "campus safety," whatever buzzword makes you sleep at night, you're a snitch who got mad that somebody thought / acts differently than you and decided to try and destroy their academic career over it. That's not activism. That's not advocacy. That's just being a creep with a political excuse.But that's not just the end of it; I see all the time on the Snap stories, the gross amount of cancel culture. This is the real cancel culture nobody talks about. And it exists at the U. The version where real people with real grudges are actively trying to ruin your life because you joined the wrong club or said some faux-pas shit on the internet.These people are not your allies. They are not fighting for justice. They are informants, and they are just as dangerous to your freedom as any corrupt administrator, maybe more, because at least the administration has to pretend to follow procedure.But the main idea here is to keep your information private: Always use a VPN, and keep your social media private. Do not allow randoms to access your information. And if anybody reading this is about to hit me with the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" nonsense; sybau.Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is the same as saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.Read that again. Slowly. So your brain can process it.Your rights don't only matter when you're actively using them. The second you accept that logic, you've handed every power-tripping administrator and every self-appointed campus watchdog the justification to monitor and report on anybody they personally decide is a problem. And at this university, "problem" just means "doesn't agree with us."Get a VPN — Proton, Surfshark, or Mullvad, run it on campus WiFi at all times, no exceptions. Lock down your socials. Don't put your business in the street. Know your 4th, 5th, and 14th amendment rights and actually use them. Never cooperate with police without a warrant. Never incriminate yourself. Not because you're doing anything wrong, but because these institutions have proven repeatedly that they will twist whatever you give them into whatever narrative serves them best.That's not a theory, that's a pattern. Your privacy is your autonomy. Protect it like it matters, because it does.Because they're are a lot of weird people at the University who will cyber-stalk you. On political polarization:Let's be honest about who's really running the political scene on this campus, because it ain't complicated.At the University of Minnesota, leftist and liberal ideology has destroyed the political integrity, and freedom at the school. Hardline progressives, people straight out of the ivory towers and pastel houses in the suburbs, have assembled their entire political identity in a suburban bedroom, and have never once had to live inside the consequences of anything they advocate for. Not once. And it shows every single time they open their mouth.Ironically, these are the same people who will preach tolerance, open dialogue, and free thought to your face, and then turn around and document your activities, screenshot your posts, witch-hunt, circle-jerk against, call you a bad person for having different ideas, and then file reports to OCS the second your politics make them uncomfortable. The hypocrisy isn't even subtle anymore. They're not even trying to hide it.FOR EXAMPLE:Gun rights? You're dangerous.Privacy advocacy? Suspicious.Dismissive to the critical race fallacy? Racist. Questioning institutional authority? Threat.Due process? Probably a criminal. ------That's the full depth of critical thinking the forty thousand dollar tuition is producing here. Congratulations.And I'm not speaking theoretically. I experienced the issue firsthand: because I was a founding member of a libertarian student group at this university.We advocated for constitutional rights, firearm safety, privacy, and due process. Normal stuff. Legal stuff. Stuff that's supposed to be protected. And we couldn't even operate in peace because a group of fragile, nosy, chronically online leftist students decided that our existence was a problem and made it their personal mission to destroy us.They infiltrated our group. Documented our private activities without consent. Cyberstalked our members & Compiled information on our members and handed it directly to OCS and the Police, not because we did anything illegal, not because there was a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing, but because our politics offended them personally. That's it. That's the whole reason. We hurt their feelings by existing.To explain:3D Printing is not illegal, nor is Monero. Think about how unhinged that is. These are supposed to be the people fighting for marginalized communities, against institutional overreach, against surveillance and control. But the second a group of non-white students started exercising their constitutional rights in ways that weren't pre-approved by the progressive handbook, they ran straight to the institution and said "get them." They became the very thing they claim to oppose, without a single moment of self awareness about it.Fuck SDS. We had to eventually dissolve as an official university group because the harassment was relentless. Not because we did anything wrong. Not because the university found any evidence of wrongdoing, because there wasn't any.But because a handful of vindictive, sheltered, leftist, overgrown cyber-stalkers with a social justice aesthetic made our ability to organize impossible.-That's what these people actually do when given the opportunity. That's who they really are underneath the activism cosplay, and it's not wasn't just us or me, I've seen it happen to OTHER STUDENT GROUPS.For example? UMN Republicans? Canceled & Dissolved.UMN Gun club? Canceled & Dissolved.UMN Turning Point USA? Canceled & Dissolved. The majority of "progressive" students here at the U don't want freedom. They want compliance, and leftist control.They will surveil, infiltrate, report, and harass anyone who doesn't deliver it and then turn around and organize about dismantling oppressive systems.Genuinely embarrassing stuff.The main point though apart from that is that, because of the leftist liberal, hypersensitive and out-of-touch behavior a lot of the 'progressives' at this 'aCaDeMic InStItUtIOn' has caused extreme polarization, and it has become extreme difficult for opposing ideals to be expressed without the use of surveillance, and disagreement. But like the main point is this:Libertarianism gets almost no fair representation here. Advocating for gun rights, privacy, anti-surveillance, due process reform, or questioning institutional authority gets you labeled and targeted. Student groups have had their activities documented and reported to OCS and UMPD not because they did anything illegal, but because their politics were inconvenient to someone.And it's not just us, it has happened to many people here as well. It's pathetic, and administration enables this. People aren't allowed to congregate and form official communities on controversial topics or ideas on the basis of maintaining status quo of the leftist control. I'm not wrong either, try and start up another chapter of TPUSA, or Libertarian - you would probably experience the same issues I'm describing. It's practically impossible because a certain portion of the community engages in cancel culture. That's a chilling effect on free thought, and it should concern you.Practical takeaways:Use a no-logs like Proton, or Mullvad VPN on campus WiFiPrivatize your socialsDon't volunteer your political views publicly until you know who you're talking toKnow your constitutional rights — 4th, 5th, 14thNever talk to police without a lawyer presentStay aware of your surroundings off-campusSupport Minnesota Libertarians if these values resonateThe most radical thing you can do at this university is think independently, protect your privacy, and refuse to be categorized by either political extreme.Stay safe out there.And we're actually Libertarian, we actually help people. Ezra's Light Foundation and Hmong Baptist Church members. Off topic, and I know this isn't the most appropriate ending, and I don't mean to break rule #1. of this sub, but I think this needs to be said: If different ideas, different experiences, and different people who refuse to be controlled makes you uncomfortable, then do us all a favor and get your fucking ignorant White-ass back to back to the suburbs.- Your friends at the former UMN Asian-American Libertarians.
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