Monday, February 11, 2002
Page 7
AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column) Universities Have Their Work Cut Out for Them
By DAVID KLINE
The number of college freshman who label themselves “liberal” or “far left” is growing, according to a survey released two weeks ago.
That’s the bad news for mainstream Americans. The good news is that once the students graduate and start paying payroll taxes, their attitudes about taxing and spending are likely to undergo dramatic rightward changes.
The other good news is that the survey’s findings already are obsolete, and it’s very likely that the number of leftists already has fallen considerably.
The survey was conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, using questionnaires completed by 281,064 students from 421 colleges and universities. The answers were statistically adjusted to be representative of the 1.2 million freshmen who entered four-year institutions last fall, survey director Linda Sax said.
According to Sax, 29.9 percent of the incoming freshmen characterized their political views as liberal or far left, up from 27.7 percent the year before, and the highest percentage in 20 years. Twenty-one percent labeled themselves “conservative” or “far right,” while 49.5 percent said they are “middle of the road.”
Unlike some surveys, this one didn’t use a leading question to skew the results one way or the other. It simply asked, “How would you characterize your political views?” Five choices were offered: far left, liberal, middle of the road, conservative and far right.
Still, there’s a huge problem with the statistics. The vast majority of the surveys—97.5 percent—were completed prior to Sept. 11, when patriotism was still a dirty word and the political polarization of the 2000 election was palpable.
When the airplanes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many Americans had a sudden change of attitude. The country became more hawkish, more focused on national security and more aware that our government was created to secure our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not to give us handouts from the maternity ward to the mausoleum.
As a reference point for how far we’ve come, consider President Bush’s approval ratings, then and now. In the notorious state of Florida, the president’s approval rating was 52 percent one month after he took office. On Feb. 1, it was 80 percent, according to a poll by the Mason-Dixon Political Research group, which also conducted the first survey.
Considering the timing of the college survey, then, conservatives needn’t lose sleep over the 2.2 percent increase in the liberalism of freshman. Young people are known to change their minds about such things with some degree of frequency, so the post-Sept. 11 figures should show a large right-wing rebound.
Nor should we be too concerned about freshmen attitudes toward drugs (the survey found 36.5 percent in support of legalizing marijuana) or affirmative action (51 percent in support). These students will come around as they witness more of their classmates’ lives being ruined by abuse, and encounter more examples of the folly of judging people by the color of their skin.
To persuade college students to come to their right-wing senses, winning the war on terror with a conservative in office wouldn’t hurt, either.
—Capitol News Service
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company