For many teens, political engagement does not directly begin in polling booths or town halls but instead in friendly discussions, social media chats, or classroom debates. Since awareness of current events often precedes formal participation, students, especially those too young to vote, are left to navigate if, how, and where their views should be expressed.
On November 26, 2025, during the school’s annual fall break, Milton Progressives sent an all-school Club Hub announcement encouraging students to join the club in “volunteering to call Tennessee voters” to help Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn, who was polling two points behind her Republican opponent in a special election at the time. Framed as a rare opportunity to influence a “crucial race,” the club invited students to volunteer over break.
Milton Progressives is one of three politically focused student-run clubs on campus and operates primarily as a discussion-based group centered on current events. Meetings, which occur weekly during Club Block 1, often begin with Co-Heads bringing in news stories from the past week, ranging from economic policy to international conflict, much of which is highly relevant to the political state of the United States and beyond. According to Co-Head Rhys Adams ‘26, while Progressives are politically liberal in nature, it actively encourages challenges to prevailing opinions. Adams noted that “skeptical voices… make our thinking much stronger and can expand our worldview.” When the club does engage in direct political action, such as phone banks or campaign support, those decisions are made collectively by the board. Adams explained that the group typically looks for competitive races, generally prioritizing “the most progressive swing-seat candidate[s] possible who [Progressive’s Board] believe[s] has a chance of winning,” while also considering “potential conflicts of interest and governance records.” The goal, Adams said, is not only advocacy, but civic learning. By shifting students from agonizing over online politics to organizing in tangible ways, students are able to “become more adept communicators with concrete, well-articulated values.”
Yet the impact that Milton Progressives has on student activism and awareness also highlights what is no longer present. While the club offers a clear and organised pathway for students to navigate around current politics, there is currently no student-run group representing conservative political perspectives—a counterpart that, according to Director of Student Activities Kelly Reiser, was last active for the 2021–2022 academic year, and then failed to re-register for the next academic year.
According to Progressives faculty advisor and Chair of the History and Social Sciences Department Joshua Emmott, Conservatives Club was “very active” and had a “healthy membership.” The club, founded before 2010, used to host various political activists and speakers that spoke about conservatism, especially in the context of the left-dominated political environment of Massachusetts. To understand that absence, it helps to look at how political life at Milton has shifted over the years. Emmott, who has taught at Milton for over two decades, recalled a campus that was once much more politically charged, and believes that student “engagement and enthusiasm have gone down.” This shift, one that Emmott considered unfortunate, reflects how, in his view, the disappearance of a conservative counterpart does not necessarily point to controversy or wrongdoing and may just be a product of a decades-long downward trend in overall political engagement and openness. However, the change may raise a quieter, often overlooked question: If a politically healthy community is a community with a “multiplicity of ideas,” as Emmott put it, why is it that we hear relatively fewer conservative voices on campus?
To some extent, this imbalance is unsurprising. Milton is situated in Massachusetts, a blue state that is dominated by left-leaning politics. It would be unrealistic to expect student political identities to be evenly distributed across the spectrum. But demographic reality alone does not explain why alternative views are often so quiet.
The absence of a conservative counterpart implies a structural dilemma in the inclusive sphere of Milton, and the 2025 State of the Acad data shows the effects at a more individual level. According to last year’s survey, 9.7% of Milton students lean “conservative,” yet 86% of those students reported feeling the need to censor themselves because of their political leaning. Audriana Victoria ‘28, for example, who considers herself more right-leaning, “[does] not feel comfortable sharing [her] political views.” She attributes this hesitation to “the primarily left-leaning teacher and student population.”
“This can influence my participation in class regarding specific topics and make me feel as though I have to silence my views or pretend to share similar ones to those around me,” Victoria concluded.
By contrast, only 22% of progressive student respondents to the State of the Acad survey responded with similar concerns. At Milton, even when conservative views exist, they may be far less likely to be shared.
Leo Wan ‘28, a self-described centrist who says he “supports DEI but opposes abortion,” feels that class discussions often feel “awkwardly uncomfortable,” and he purposely “[tries] not to take either stance,” whether liberal or conservative, out of fear of being “judged in the currently heated political environment.” Wan feels he has “differing views on many specific political arguments,” yet believes that liberals have filters on centrists and conservatives that “wrongly [sort] [centrists and conservatives] into pre-made social groups driven by social media and the blue-dominated teenage environment of Milton.”
While Progressives member Caira Rahim ’28 acknowledges that political opinions across campus are not evenly distributed, she feels that disagreement is often welcomed, with students “very likely to encourage disagreement” at the Harkness table, even if most discussions end up having a dominant perspective. She described Progressives club meetings as spaces where students can “see [issues] in a different light” and feel comfortable sharing their perspectives. Her experience suggests that students may not only differ in political beliefs, but also in how open they perceive the environment to be.
In the presence of dominant ideas, dissenters can become socially invisible due to invisible barriers of judgement and fear. Students in the minority may inevitably find that silence becomes the easier option.
At a school that prides itself on discussion, debate, and the Harkness table, the question does not lie in whether Milton is an ideologically diverse school or not—it simply is and continues to be. What’s needed is for these different views to be equally visible and supported, so students can take advantage of a learning environment with diverse perspectives. In a state where Democratic politics dominate public life, it is unsurprising that Milton also reflects that reality. The absence of a Conservative Club, the decline in overall political engagement, and the high rate of self-censorship among non-progressive students do not necessarily imply institutional silencing as much as a student-fostered cultural environment where some views are rendered invisible. A culture that truly values dialogue must make space for minority voices, and if political participation at Milton is to be more than enthusiastic agreement, it must be a place where students feel completely safe to speak, question, and argue. Only then can our dialogue live up to the ideals the school so often prides itself on.