The campus has been quiet this campaign season. Too quiet.

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With the election looming, every other headline seems to be Trump this or Harris that. The air should be buzzing with talk about politics, and yet, the air on my college campus is distinctly quiet on the subject. I haven’t had a single conversation about politics with a student who isn’t a very close friend since arriving on campus in August. Why is this? Do my peers simply not care about politics? Or is something darker going on behind my campus’ cheery façade?

While I firmly believe that political discourse is an important part of becoming an informed voter, I simply cannot bring myself to seek out political conversations on my campus. The reason is simple: I’m a left-leaning student at a right-leaning university, and I’m afraid that the response to my beliefs would be critical at best, ostracizing at worst.

This fear isn’t unique to me, and it’s not unique to my campus. Colleges and universities across the country are seeing low levels of political conversation for this very reason: College students are afraid to express their political views on campus. Only 44% of college students say they “feel comfortable expressing their opinions on campus without fear of negative consequences.” When personal feelings of comfort or discomfort are set aside, the numbers become more alarming: Only 42% of respondents said that college students “are able to speak their minds about political issues at school without fear of negative consequences.”

This fear stems from the growing trend of cancel culture. Cancel culture is a phenomenon in which large groups of people decide someone or something is no longer acceptable. At first, only celebrities and public figures were being “canceled,” but the trend has gained traction. Now, books and movies can be “canceled.” Locations and cities can be “canceled.” Even words and ideas can be canceled. “Canceling” has become such a normal thing that every individual seems to think they have the right to “cancel” anyone or anything they wish.

The prevalence of cancel culture has brought with it a prevalence of fear. Freedom of speech has become fear of speech.

While the average college student is probably not well known enough to be “canceled” on a large scale, the fear of being “canceled,” of being ignored and ostracized by friends and classmates is enough to keep students silent on divisive issues. And politics is one of the most divisive issues of all.

It seems as though Republicans and Democrats take pride in being as polarized as possible. The partisan divide is widening, and politicians seem to be making no effort to slow or reverse that movement.

A Democratic student sees the ferocious disagreement between the parties on Capitol Hill and assumes that her Republican classmates will reject her thoughts just as violently. Whether such rejection would take place is beside the point, her fear of being rejected, of being “canceled,” forces her to “cancel” her own thoughts and ideas.

And so, political discourse is stifled on campuses across the country. And if students aren’t talking about politics, odds are they aren’t learning much about politics either. What student has extra time to research candidates and issues? An entire age group of voters is not nearly as informed as they could be.

According to an article in Electoral Studies, when voters are uninformed, they “systematically vote out of line with their preferences,” meaning that their votes do not accurately represent their core values. Uninformed voters cast their votes based solely on party affiliation or social media clips. What they don’t know is that their vote rarely goes to the candidate who is truly most in line with their beliefs and values.

Every voter, regardless of age, should be well informed about who and what they are voting for, but the climate of cancel culture on college campuses is preventing students from discussing divisive issues and, thus, from gaining important information on the candidates and issues on the ballot. When an entire age group of voters is uninformed, the results of elections do not accurately represent the will of the American people.

The polarization of politics must come to an end. If it does not, the partisan divide will continue to grow. I fear that if our country continues on its current path, the partisan divide will extend, creating politically segregated schools, then cities, then states, and before we know it, our country will be completely divided, and there will be no going back.

Miriam Drabek, of Savage, is a university student.