NYU’s pro-Trump students fear for their safety — and grades.
They may be flooding caucus rooms across the country, but Donald Trump supporters at NYU keep their heads down, mouths shut and their correspondence secret.
Lying in class about their political beliefs and keeping online conversations strictly private are typical precautions taken by The Donald’s badly outnumbered followers on campus.
“Supporters generally try to keep it hidden from the rest of the student body,” said junior Dylan Perera, 22. “They’re afraid of losing friends, being ridiculed in class, getting worse grades and are even afraid of being assaulted and physically hurt.”
The computer-science major from LA said he was verbally accosted by a student who had asked about his affiliation.
“She freaked out and started yelling and screaming in my face, calling me a racist and a fascist. It was impossible to even have a conversation,” he said.
Another student was so concerned about being outed as a Trump supporter that he reserved a private room on campus — for “security reasons” — to speak to a Post reporter. He recalled being ostracized by his “radical social-justice warrior” roommates. “Their hatred towards me started escalating after we had a few political discussions,” he said.
As Trump spoke during a televised GOP debate he was watching, his roommates drowned out the candidate by playing an anti-Trump video on their computer at maximum volume.
“Either you’re on their side or you’re a racist f–k, in their eyes,” the student said. “I’ve learned just to bottle up [my response]” to such antagonizing.
The anonymous, 21-year-old Princeton, NJ, native said he was unmasked as a Trump supporter by a professor Friday, even after he had specifically asked in an e-mail that the teacher not bring up his political views.
“He was explaining what platitudes are to the class, and he brought up Trump as an example. How him saying, ‘I’m great,’ is a platitude,” he recalled. “It got a big laugh from the class and then he looked right at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had to get one in.’”
The singled-out student said he was “ freaking out and trying to play it cool and then said something like, ‘What are you looking at me for?’”
He said he fears being “shunned or attacked,” calling both “equally degrading.”
Disaffected Trumpers on the famously liberal 57,000-student campus have begun to gather in undetectable ways, through Facebook and in one-on-one meet-ups.
‘[Trump supporters are] afraid of losing friends, being ridiculed in class, getting worse grades and are even afraid of being assaulted and physically hurt’
- Dylan Perera, student
“It’s really decentralized” because “most people are too afraid to start an official group,” explained Perera of the “word-of-mouth network.” He estimates there are about 30 unofficial “members” of the Trump underground.
Another junior, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she typically steers clear of public debates that will reveal her pro-Trump beliefs.
“It can get hostile,” she said, recalling recent political spats between students on Facebook. “They’ll usually throw around words like ‘racist’ or ‘bigot’ about Trump and then call the students trying to defend him ‘delusional.’”
She recently was emboldened enough to “like” a student’s post that bravely defended the GOP front-runner in a Facebook thread.
Yet many are still firmly in the campaign closet.
“I’ve been too smart to paint a target on my head and take that kind of heat,” said one anonymous student.
“It’s just not worth it.”