It’s not that often that a Facebook post ends up in a trip to the dean’s office, but that’s where Lans Carcioppolo wound up.
Earlier this month, Carcioppolo, a junior at the University of West Georgia, posted photos on Facebook of him removing unofficial signs from bathrooms around campus. The signs declared the bathrooms to be “liberated from the gender binary,” but Carcioppolo saw them as “bull crap.”
For Carcioppolo, the campus at UWG is being “liberalized,” and he feels like he is marginalized for his conservative views. “I’m tired of liberal campuses shutting down a conservative agenda. This safe space is a sham,” he said in a Facebook Live video. “That is not how you learn. Because I’m a conservative does not make me wrong. Because you are a liberal does not make you wrong. We have two different opinions. We’re Americans. That is our right.”
Shelby Hearn, president of UWG’s LGBT group Lambda, which appears to have put up the signs, took issue with what Carcioppolo did. “Our problem is less with Lans … than with the fact that he felt entitled to do that,” Hearn said, with the group’s social media manager Kaleigh Ingram adding that all students should feel safe on campus. They also believe that the idea that conservatives cannot freely express themselves at West Georgia is fantasy, something Carcioppolo disagrees with.
Carcioppolo, a Marco Rubio supporter during the Republican primary, is now a supporter of Donald Trump, which he says students have not taken kindly to. “I’ve been called a racist more times this year than at any time in my life,” he said, and he believes that all the talk about “safe spaces” and respect for diverse viewpoints don’t actually apply to everyone.
He says the dean let him off with a warning for tearing down the signs.