www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/01/24_freshmen.shtml
RIGHT: Liberal freshmen outnumber conservatives at Berk eley by more than 4 to 1, but that doesn't mean that student groups like the Int'l Socialist Organization don't coexist peacefully with the Coll ege Republicans.
Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 24 January 2005 UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITY: Who says conservatives don't have a sense of h umor? Do same-sex couples have the right to legal marital status? Yes, no, and yes, said a substantial majority of respondents on the Fall 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen. That's because Berkeley's been moving steadily mainstream ever since the Age of Aquarius and Vietnam War-era campus radicalism, right? Wrong, acc ording to the Office of Student Research (OSR), which has administered t his survey for several decades. In fact, students today are a lot more liberal than they were during the 1980s.
In 2004, alth ough liberals also outnumbered conservatives among college freshmen nati onwide, it was by a slim margin, with a solid majority calling themselve s middle of the road.
That a Berkeley freshman tends to be more liberal than the average freshm an is again not surprising. What is interesting is that somehow Berkeley 's leftward view has remained fairly constant, even as the ethnic makeup of the university's freshman class has changed markedly since 1972.
Mirroring the makeup of the Republican party and conservati ve freshmen nationwide, Berkeley conservatives are not only more likely to be male, they're more likely to be white males. The political differen ces between genders were imperceptible among underrepresented minorities and less pronounced for Asian freshmen. The liberal female-conservative male dynamic has not always existed at Be rkeley. Back in 1972, male liberals outnumbered female liberals by 12%.
See Figure 4) Guns, gays and stay-at-home moms What does it mean to be liberal or conservative at Berkeley? Is it possib le that "middle of the road" on this campus is still west of the rest of the country? Although the 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen provided no definition of "liberal" or "conservative" that students could use to cla ssify their views, more insight can be gained by comparing their answers to a set of statements about social, moral, and political issues such a s abortion and same-sex marriage with those of other US freshmen. Berkeley freshmen on whether same-sex marriage should be legalized Dennis Cheng 'I don't have strong feelings either way.
The gap is indeed there, but not as wide as might be expected for most topics, with the biggest divide coming not on same-sex marriage , but on raising taxes for the wealthy and abolishing capital punishment . Respondents were directed to indicate whether they agreed strongly, agree d somewhat, disagreed somewhat, or disagreed strongly with the statement s For the convenience of this article, these four responses have been s implified into "agreed" or "disagreed."
Berkeley freshmen were more divided on the remainder of the questions. Born again, born abroad OSR's 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen measured a lot more than their pol itical views. For the first time in its history, the survey was given to freshmen mid-semester, rather than at the start of the year, allowing d etailed questions about their actual rather than anticipated Berkeley ex perience to be included. These responses provide invaluable data for adm inistrators. Berkeley freshmen on the role religion plays in their lives Jennifer Tillett 'Christianity is pretty important to me. I grew up in a Christian household, and it's shaped my morals, how I think about things . Homet own: Los Angeles, CA Lucy Allen 'Religion has never played a role in my life. Loan Pham 'I'm not religious, but I still believe in the ideas and philos ophy of Buddhism.
Those who have noticed the number of stud ent religious groups holding court at Sproul Plaza tables might nod thei r heads when they hear that 266 of the 2,315 freshmen respondents said t hey considered themselves born-again Christians. Demographically, first-generation Americans continue to make up the bulk of the student body. The hunger for advanced degrees goes hand in hand with the number of high achievers and first-generation American students at Berkeley. Not surprisingly, the most popular career choices were doctor, lawyer/jud ge, business exec/CEO, engineer, and architect. It's worth noting, howev er, that 27 students of the 2,315 Berkeley respondents intend to go into politics, 4 want to be astronauts, 4 want to be chefs, and 2 students i ntend to be a "mom (child rearing)." Of the least significance to Berkeley freshmen were creating artistic wor k, writing original works, or "becoming accomplished in one of the perfo rming arts" more than half said not one of those three goals was importa nt to them at all.
Berkeley's Office of Student Research ended its parti cipation in the CIRP survey in 1990 in order to collect its own data che aper and faster. However, for Berkeley's 2004 survey, the OSR received p ermission from HERI to include the exact language of the 14 statements; it added two of its own about the war in Iraq and civil liberties. Becau se the CIRP survey is a paper questionnaire sent to thousands of respond ents, 2004 figures will not be available from HERI until later this year . Because historically, answers tend to shift only incrementally from ye ar to year, this article uses the 2003 CIRP responses from more than 275 ,000 freshmen at US baccalaureate-offering universities for comparison purposes with the 2004 Berkeley data.
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