I’m tired of the negativity that is expressed towards the Democratic Party recently through the use of the word liberal to give a negative connotation. For every instance that Jennifer Orlando feels put under the microscope for being a conservative and a college student at the same time, there is a comparable instance where a Republican on campus will refer to Democrats, such as myself, as “dirty liberals.”

I have no problem with the word liberal. Liberalism has been around for many years and has been the cause of many great things. Democrats have advanced the cause of liberalism to help attain the right to vote for women, furthered the civil rights cause, advanced environmental initiatives worldwide and given the right to marry to homosexual individuals in such liberal bastions as Massachusetts, or “Kennedyland” as Orlando puts it in Leaning to the Right (SN 8/9). These are only a few of the championed reforms made by “liberals” across the country.