In the seven weeks since Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, some Utah students say they have seen a marked shift in how politics is discussed on campus.
“People kind of shut down faster than before,” said Utah Tech University student Natalia Cervantes. “They're not as open to talking or discussing their own ideals.”
Cervantes describes herself as an independent, and said students on campus have always talked about politics. The tone, however, definitely changed after Kirk’s death.
“I feel like students are still [talking about politics], but they're quicker to be aggressive rather than just put up a wall,” she said, “And that's kind of on both sides, because they feel very passionately.”
It’s a similar story at the University of Utah.
“Out in the open on campus, it turns very aggressive very quickly from what I've seen because people just aren't willing to hear each other out,” said freshman Summer Anderson, who leans more Republican. “They have their own opinions and aren't willing to learn about the other views in the world, and that leads to a lot of disrespect.”
Anderson’s friend Riju Chawla sees herself as more of a Democrat and said that, in her experience, students at the university tend to engage in politics “very dramatically.”
“I feel like people have very polar opposite opinions,” she said, “Oftentimes people are on one side completely or another side completely … I see a lot of disagreements that start friendly and then turn into a big argument, or like, ‘let's not talk to this person anymore.’”
For both Anderson and Chawla, that descent into disrespect is what turns them off from discussing politics publicly.
This is something Tim Shriver thinks a lot about.
He’s the founder and CEO of UNITE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding common ground and easing political divisions. He also co-created the organization’s Dignity Index, which rates the civility of political speech.
According to Shriver, political disagreements start to spiral out of control as soon as one person fails to respect the dignity of the other. In fact, reacting with anger can even be natural.
“A dignity violation meets an instinctive desire for revenge,” he said during an Oct. 21 panel hosted by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
“Some people feel, and I assume rightly so, that their dignity has been violated intentionally by someone on the other side. The desire to have your dignity seen and respected is this primal motivating force.”
For him, the charged political climate that contributed to Kirk’s death can’t be blamed on any one individual or group.
But he said there’s also an appetite for something different.
“There's a lot of demand and a lot of hunger for an alternative to the way things are in our country and in our culture and in our families and in our communities and in our politics and in our schools,” he said.
For real change to occur, he said, it needs to start at the individual level with everyday interactions.
“It literally is a question of really internalizing the issue of the person in the mirror,” he said. “Who needs to change to make our country have more dignity? That guy right there, the person in the mirror.”
In the immediate wake of Kirk’s shooting, Gov. Spencer Cox warned of something similar. “This is our moment: Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp?” the governor said of political violence in that moment. He emphasized that it was a choice, especially for the younger generation.
Respect is something U students Anderson and Chawla try to emulate in their own conversations about politics.
“I’m very strong in my beliefs. I'm very strong in my values,” Anderson said. “But that does not mean I'm not willing to learn and hear out other people who have different values and different views of the world. I think just more people at our ages need to be like that and just be more willing to hear others out.”
Chawla also sees empathy as an important facet of a constructive conversation with someone she might disagree with.
“I think a lot of it comes from understanding why people feel certain ways about things,” she said. “And then being able to come from a place of more compassion towards that, like, ‘OK, I understand where you get those ideas from.’ It's easier to challenge them, because you can understand where they came from.”
For Cervantes at Utah Tech, real change could be a challenge in a world still coming to terms with a prominent political assassination that shocked Utah.
“I think things will never be able to go back to how things were before [Charlie Kirk died], but I do think improvements can be made to how people interact,” she said. “I do think that there is almost a hope for an increase in civility when people do talk with each other and a respect for each other's own beliefs, or just even to debate civilly, I think. But it will take a lot.”
No matter what, Shriver said that continuing the status quo is a dangerous path that could lead to more serious consequences and more violence.
“We think that's the best strategy, hating them because they're so hateful, and we don't quite snap out of it enough to realize we've become what we loathed.”
Editor’s note: KUER is a licensee of the University of Utah but operates as an editorially independent news organization.
