There is a unique phenomenon at Garfield, a product of being a diverse school in one of the most liberal cities in the country. Despite differences in race, religion, and class, we somehow manage to come together as one like-minded body during class discussions and persecute the few kids who have opinions that are different, and usually more conservative, than our own.

Some of the most intolerant people I have ever met are not the right-wing, Ann Coulter-ish nutjobs one would expect to epitomize that label. They are liberal high-school students who don’t fully understand what they’re arguing about, yet still hold the unshakeable conviction that they are right. I have fallen victim to this trap myself; it’s so easy when supported by twenty-five other people in a classroom debate, and and it’s difficult to remember that our opponents have just as much of a right to their opinion as we do.

Last year, when a student was threatened by other students after writing an opinion column on his view of affirmative action, it was clear that closemindedness has become too accepted in our school. Although this student may not have organized his opinion in the article in the most sensitive way, the negative and hostile reaction to the column was uncalled for, and brought to light an unfortunate truth about many students at Garfield.

We sit in those Socratic seminars, smirking to each other as the unfortunate students who have been called out struggle to explain their views, rolling our eyes as we think “oh, they don’t know anything,” when really, the students who are willing to stand up for their unpopular conviction have probably thought about the issue the most, if only through necessity so they can defend their opinion. I’ve witnessed an entire class actually hiss at a student attempting to explain why he would not support Obama. It is those of us in the majority, those of us who never get attacked for our beliefs, who need to stand back and consider if we have really thought things through.

If you support gay marriage, that’s great. So do I. But why? It is so common, in political debates at school, that those of us who hold the popular opinion can’t actually defend what we are arguing, not because it is wrong, but because we have never had to. But you can bet that the one kid who’s arguing against it will have to face an onslaught of abuse, and in this school that person had best be well-prepared to fight.

We at Garfield can be almost close-minded in our liberalism, sometimes even misguided, and it injures everyone involved. For example, the student who will no longer participate in class discussions after others have railed against them for being pro-life, when in fact they were trying to explain that they personally wouldn’t choose abortion. Or, even worse, the teacher who once told a class that everyone who was pro-life may as well belong to Al-Qaeda.

Not only are these insults harmful to the psyches of the students at whom they are directed, they are detrimental to those doing the persecuting, who will never consider a viewpoint that challenges their own, and never be forced to think about an issue another way.

It is worth remembering that popular opinion has not always been, and even now is not always what we, the liberal majority, consider morally correct. There was a time when people who thought like many of us at Garfield do now had their opinions silenced, just as we in the majority often do to different-minded students now. I am not condemning or endorsing anyone’s viewpoint, just acknowledging that everyone has a right to have one.. You can think that the sky is purple, and that’s fine, until you try to force that opinion on someone else. If we remember this in classroom discussion, we may end up learning something, about politics, and about our peers as well.