Confessions of a Campus Conservative

By Lauren Veldhuizen

Thursday, August 20, 2026

 

In college, I was a conservative theater student; very few still exist. As such, I spent the majority of my time at Wake Forest in the Scales Fine Arts Center, rehearsing alongside my dearest friends who, by the end of our time together, considered many of my beliefs to be in direct opposition to their mental and physical safety, and my opinions a threat to their very existence.

 

Having been in the theater world for 15 years, I understood that many of its inhabitants did not take kindly to conservatives, let alone Republicans. Over the years, I learned to keep my thoughts to myself. I kept my head down and offered my political opinion only when it was asked for. Even then, I coated my answers with language acceptable to my liberal peers because I thought it was silly to let something as trivial as differing beliefs stand in the way of presenting a story onstage.

 

Then, at the tail end of my senior year, I attended an event with virtually the entire theater student body in which I explained — now looking back on it, rather loudly — that I didn’t necessarily disagree with the political beliefs of one of our Republican peers who had graduated the year before. The room went quiet. Eyes widened. I heard a girl whisper in the back, “Did she just come out as a conservative?” Snide laughs, gasps, and side glances rippled throughout the room. My face reddened to, I am sure, the color of a ripe tomato. It finally happened — I had officially outed myself.

 

The funny thing is that I had never actually thought about it in that way. It wasn’t a secret that I was conservative; I was rather open about my beliefs when people asked, and I had become more outspoken in my writing throughout my senior year, particularly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. However, conservatism certainly wasn’t something I openly discussed with most of my theatrical peers. I knew that if I did, most of my ideas would not be welcomed. I was right, but that should not have stopped me.

 

***

 

Higher education is, without a doubt, overwhelmingly left-wing, from its student body to its faculty to its administrators. But I did not find it to be the ideological war zone that many Republicans claim it to be. A survey conducted in February by Inside Higher Ed found that among American adults, only 26 percent of Republicans were “highly confident in higher education,” but the majority of students participating in academia, including conservatives, feel differently.

 

According to a Gallup and Lumina Foundation report, “just 2 percent of all college students — including 3 percent of Republicans — say they feel they don’t belong on campus because of their political beliefs.” Furthermore, this report also explains that “between 67 percent and 74 percent of Democrats and Republicans say all or most of their faculty members encourage students to share their views and support speakers and listeners during those discussions.”

 

This does not mean that campuses are friendly to conservatives. As mentioned, most higher education student bodies lean left, and many on campus are prejudiced against conservatives. A study published in the Journal of Social Psychology found that liberal bias against conservatives was almost three times greater than conservative bias toward liberals. Additionally, the study found that liberal participants believed that conservatives were more prejudiced than liberals, whereas conservatives attributed the same levels of prejudice to both liberals and conservatives.

 

These findings seem to be at odds with each other: College campuses are very liberal places, and liberals are more prejudiced against conservatives; yet conservatives say that they feel welcome on their campuses. But there are a few things happening on college campuses and within the minds of their few conservative students that can help explain this disparity. First, conservative students don’t often make their political views their entire identity, as liberal students tend to do. For conservatives, politics are more tied to a way of life and a demeanor than to an identity, whereas liberals often claim an identity — based on race, gender, or sexuality — that then determines or largely shapes their political beliefs.

 

I have found, in the theater community especially, that if someone disagrees with a liberal, it is perceived as an attack on the individual’s personhood rather than a challenge to liberal beliefs. Conservatives are less likely to think this way; when people disagree with our beliefs, we don’t interpret it as a deeply personal attack. This means that, for a conservative student, a sense of belonging is less dependent on acceptance of political beliefs than it is for liberals, so conservatives are less likely to say they do not belong on campus because of their political beliefs.

 

Second, conservative students remain silent, or “closeted,” in the classroom. It is true that I rarely felt that I didn’t belong, and my professors didn’t discourage me from speaking my mind, but I didn’t feel encouraged, either. I knew my place and expressed myself in particular settings where I knew I could; in settings where I knew my beliefs were unpopular, I stayed quiet. Most conservative students I knew did the same, either out of fear of being ostracized or a simple desire to not rock the boat. There was rarely an opportunity for liberals to express hostility to conservative opinions because I and other conservatives rarely shared our views. There were a few exceptions, but most of the time, I kept my opinions close to my chest until the end of class, when I could call my dad and debrief from the safety of my dorm room.

 

In this sense, I absolutely was what one might call a “closeted conservative,” or a silent conservative; I also wasn’t the only one. Most conservatives on Wake Forest’s campus were publicly “closeted” in the classroom until they discovered a like-minded peer and found solace in private, post-lecture conversations. Silence formed camaraderie among those who felt that remaining silent was mandatory to maintain friendships or reputation. “Closeted conservatives” always had a way of finding one another and creating an unintentional “secret society” of shared values and whispered opinions, especially in more left-wing disciplines such as the performing arts or humanities. This camaraderie transcended majors, extracurriculars, and even travel to a foreign country.

 

I vividly remember one instance during my time abroad in Vienna when I was riding on the U-Bahn, surrounded by my roommates and peers. Most of the professors and administrators of the American program I participated in were, unsurprisingly, left-wing; many of my classmates followed suit. As the Austrian train chugged along, I made a fleeting comment about my stance on a current election, and my roommate’s head whipped around as her eyes grew wide. “Are you conservative?!” she silently mouthed to me across the train car, so as not to alert the other passengers. My nod signaled the beginning of a deeper friendship built on venting sessions over our shared values, with a mutual understanding that we could not voice our opinions openly without triggering an extreme backlash from our peers and professors. So we discussed them among ourselves.

 

I had this experience repeatedly back on Wake Forest’s campus. I made a comment, or overheard one made by a peer, and a friendship was formed. I knew most conservative students in my academic disciplines; we talked politics privately and stayed quiet when necessary. We didn’t push it, so we did not receive hostile pushback — but a lack of hostility toward conservatives because of their silence should not be the benchmark for discourse in higher education.

 

A lack of hostility is different from actively encouraging people to express opinions contrary to what’s acceptable. Professors and administrators alike, whether Republican or Democrat, must demand more of themselves as the beacons of knowledge that shape the future minds and leaders of our country. Yet conservative students like me cannot expect things to change if we are not willing to speak our minds and defend our values.

 

Liberal prejudice against conservatives, particularly among people in my generation, is fostered by online echo chambers, fearmongering that masquerades as reporting, and identity politics, as mentioned earlier. All of this predisposes liberal students to hate conservatism. But in their defense, we often don’t give them the opportunity to be proven wrong.

 

It took me until my senior year and the assassination of Charlie Kirk to write and publish what I believe, but even then, I kept my opinions to myself when discussing matters in person. The more I wrote and the more I spoke, though, the more two things happened: I lost shallow friendships, and I deepened the relationships that remained. Many of the people who stuck around disagreed with me, but because I was passionate and respectful, we had conversations that ultimately changed their perception of conservatives.

 

Conservatism is deeply misunderstood and villainized by people in my generation, but it is much easier to villainize something unfamiliar than a person you have come to care about. When I started having meaningful dialogues, people’s initial, cartoonish idea of what a conservative was — a prejudiced, racist monster — fell apart. In the end, coming out as a conservative was the best thing that could have happened to me, even if it meant that I had fewer friends and more uncomfortable conversations. It showed me who was worth my time and energy, and it forced me to truly consider whether what I believed was worth defending. I decided that it was. It still is.

 

Is speaking up and dealing with the consequences a fair solution? Far from it, but it is the current academic reality. Politicians can do only so much to change things from the top down; it is up to students to decide which battles are worth fighting. If coming out as a conservative is what it takes, so be it.