Illustration by Emily Wang/The Gazelle

Partisanship and political bickering are ubiquitous issues across domestic and international politics. The recent political jabs over the Sochi Winter Olympics come to mind as a contemporary example, but even more disheartening are the similar instances within our own community and communities in general. Although I do not consider it the norm at NYU Abu Dhabi, similar arguments, political or otherwise, take place within insular micro-communities that hold uniform political values. When these discussions do emerge in the form of highly entertaining Facebook fights, they eventually get buried in the digital slough next to desperate queries about courses.

Armchair activism is a favorite activity of many students — myself included — as evidenced by the recent, noble discussion on the disrespectful nature of Sama Tower graffiti. It seems as though, even when we know we cannot make a difference behind a computer screen, we persist with passive-aggressive emoticons. These same discussions happen offline, but sometimes in an even less productive form. I would prefer to see the Room of Requirement trolls descend from their caves to battle it out with fabricated statistics over witnessing the formation of political micro-communities and niches.

Online, we readily jump at the opportunity to argue, but offline, we surround ourselves with people who hold similar political and personal beliefs because it is easier, especially in a world where we are constantly bombarded with politicized media. I grew up in two of the most politically different areas of the United States: Utah and the San Francisco Bay Area. Both places were filled with people more interested in mocking an ignorant caricature of the other than actually confronting differences in belief. I have heard both ardent liberals and conservatives maintain the same stance. This sort of dogmatism is not only unproductive, but when it occurs in these micro-communities, it is meaningless.

A recent underground Facebook group was founded by a group of NYUAD students who espouse conservative values and felt that their voice within our community was drowned out. Even as a liberal, I find the dogmatic, left-leaning hive-mind that occasionally rears its ugly head to be ridiculous. We should be an institution in which people, regardless of political or personal ideology, feel comfortable expressing their beliefs. But instead, we react by building communities, small and exclusive, that exist for a singular purpose. When friend circles are limited by political belief or we surround ourselves with people who agree, we end up discussing for the sake of self-congratulating. Political “debates” amongst groups of liberals or conservatives or any group of one type of belief exist as a mechanism to reward the piety of the individuals, to tell them that they are good liberals, conservatives, etc. People dive into Tumblr’s social justice networks or their politically homogenous groups of friends to pat each other the back and remark how “good” or “enlightened” they are compared to the other “ignorant” group. When our political identities become solely oppositional and our political discussions become self-obsessed and insular, we lose any benefit that could be gleaned from them.