My university’s student body is left of center, as are the faculty (or at least the professors I’ve had). The administration is rather Republican, though, including our chancellor. We were in the headline news last fall because of this: http://www.dailywire.com/news/9157/queer-muslim-jihad-mike-s-adams
The professor came off as a jerk for sure, though the student was completely asking for it with her actions. I remember those posts of hers vividly; I even commented on one of those rants respectfully and got only whining in return. She ended up transferring to a different UNC school the next semester, and I was glad she left. No sympathy whatsoever. And I’m a left-leaning moderate.
Besides, I’d MUCH rather have THAT than jokes like this:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/06/umass-amherst-harambe-jokes-are-racist-m
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8272
Realized I should probably post a more neutral reaction post re: the free speech controversy. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article119886228.html
During my D1’s search, there were a couple of schools on the parental unapproved list for non-academic reasons. Not solely because of politics but also because of what our family dynamic is. Liberty, for example, was out because we are an irreligious family and D1 has shown no issues with that or interest in religion on her own. So going to a school where religion is central to their mission seemed like a bad match. We had some similar concerns with Notre Dame. The fact that religiosity often goes hand in hand with conservative politics in the US was, I guess, a feature not a bug. :))
I agree the final article reads like an onion piece.
I don’t agree with the de facto link that being unable to compete on a financial aid level automatically means a failure to keep up in terms of student body quality. There are more than enough talented students to fill the seats at all the ivy league schools, and not everyone weighs the importance of cost the same - but that does get to my point which is the critical nature that Brown remains distinct. The closer we get to the other schools in terms of what we offer the more critical it is to compete with financial aid offers in order to keep up.
I live in a very conservative part of the country and want my kids to go somewhere like Brown to see the other side. I’m guessing it will have the same affect on them as it did on me: I take the arguments from both sides with a huge grain of salt. I hear some pretty ridiculous right wing crap every day here, but when I was in college I heard it from the left. Both sides have valid points, and both are very good and exaggerating them to the point that their argument becomes detached from reality.
If you are sheltering your kids too much from either side (not that it sounds like any of the posters are), you become part of the problem. No one is willing to hear an alternate viewpoint anymore, they just want Rachael Maddox or Sean Hannity to tell them what they KNOW to be true already. I let my kids hear the wacky stuff they get from school and some relatives, and then we TALK about it. I want to teach them to think critically, not to parrot what they heard someone else say (including what I say). It’s actually frequently pretty funny when I explain the story behind the soundbite for them. They are able to see right through people who just repeat talking points without any understanding of the real issues.
@doschicos - that’s interesting. Kenyon feels it lost applicants because our swing state went red this time around. So or being too conservative, if you will. It’s true the area around Gambier had tons of political signs in the fall that would have turned off a lot of people.
Chicago apps dropped this year? I thought that school was only going up-up-up. I’m sure there’s some hand wringing going on over in that forum 
As a soon to be Brown parent, my perception is that its reputation as a bastion of ultra-liberality is a little dated. To get into Brown today, a kid has to be pretty much top 5% of their class, top 1% standardized test scores, and have a record of contributing something (athletically, artistically, philanthropically, etc) to their school or broader community. Maybe the kids interested in going there are more liberal, on the whole, than the kids interested in going to Dartmouth, or Chicago, or Hopkins, but they’re still very thoughtful and high-achieving students. Basket weaving stoners just aren’t getting admitted these days.
Coupled with that is the leftward movement of so many schools. It was groundbreaking more than a decade ago when Brown delved into its institutional history as an enslaving institution. Now its commonplace to do so at far less traditionally liberal schools like UVA and Georgetown.
So is Brown “liberal” and properly categorized with schools like Wesleyan and Oberlin? Sure. But I also don’t think Brown’s “liberal” culture is much different from that of Yale, or Middlebury, or any number of other elite institutions that aren’t perceived to be as far left.
34 pages of hand wringing. It goes on and on and on.
Unfortunately, the exaggerated and detached from reality stuff gets propogated the most on social media, because it incites passion and anger more than a lengthy reasoned discussion that goes into the details does. It also has the effect of making people think that the other side is dominated by fringe wackos, because the fringe wacko stuff drowns out anything more sensible.
While you’re likely right about business, that’s not been my observation of HS/college classmates and colleagues who were STEM or med school alums.
The relatives and classmates who went into medicine tend to be moderate to radically liberal…partially because they don’t take kindly to those espousing anti-evolutionary pseudoscience like “Intelligent Design” as if it was equivalent to the scientific theory of evolution and most went into the field because it was a “helping profession”.
Engineering/CS folks IME as someone who not only attended school with many aspirants…but also regularly work with them professionally tend towards the political extremes. They’re either hard-right libertarians…including many Ayn Rand Objectivists or they’re radical progressive lefties who’d feel right at home at Oberlin.
“To get into Brown today, a kid has to be pretty much top 5% of their class, top 1% standardized test scores, and have a record of contributing something (athletically, artistically, philanthropically, etc) to their school or broader community. Maybe the kids interested in going there are more liberal, on the whole, than the kids interested in going to Dartmouth, or Chicago, or Hopkins, but they’re still very thoughtful and high-achieving students. Basket weaving stoners just aren’t getting admitted these days.”
News flash - one can be very liberal/progressive as well as intelligent without being a “basket weaving stoner”. 
In my experience, most are not so extreme, at least in CS. Most are left-leaning on social issues, but are all over the place on fiscal and economic issues.
While that is certainly valid, you should be equally concerned about public universities in liberal states that are in dire fiscal straits due to excess spending. My D has friends going to the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, a fine state school, but one where professors are worried about getting paid due to the state spending money like drunken sailors. The University of California also has its share of issues.
Governor Brown is a fiscally conservative Democratic governor and he has been restraining the Democratic state government from spending. No one is slashing funding for the UC system. The first tuition increase in 6 years has been proposed to lower class sizes, hire more teachers, etc. And now there’s a big tobacco tax increase to help the State’s budget too.
I think this is a misguided view. While Brown may still be able to get students with the same stats as before, they won’t get students with the same diversity of opinion as before.
College admissions involves three decisions, and students are in charge of two of them:
- Students choose which colleges to apply to.
- Of the students that apply, a college can choose the ones to accept.
- Among their acceptances, students choose the one college they will attend.
Elite students have just as much say at #1 and #3 that elite colleges have at #2.
Yale is an interesting example in our own family. My nephew is a recent graduate from there. My D had stats and ECs that put her in contention at Yale and its peers (note that I realize this doesn’t imply acceptance). She had seen Yale and loved it, and Yale along with Columbia were her two top picks at the beginning of her junior year.
Then the Yale Halloween costume incident happened. What bothered her more than the lack of intelligence among the protesters, was how Yale treated the Christakis family. That treatment, coupled with the realization that she wanted to live in a city, completely dropped Yale from her list.
So here D is, a strong student that actually leans somewhat liberal (pro-Choice, etc.) with a family connection to Yale, and yet Yale didn’t even merit an application from her. Columbia, with the Mattress Girl incident, dropped from a top choice to a “I guess I can go there if I have to.”
And yes, in all this, Brown was completely off the table.
@hebegebe wrote
Was Mattress Girl infringing on anyone’s freedom of speech? Was she blocking doorways or hallways? So often this has nothing to do with politics per se, but, rather, “I don’t want to go to any college where people do weird, jarring, things that make everyone feel uncomfortable.”
I don’t remember the details, but I think it was because Mattress Girl had considerable faculty support rather than realizing she was a mental train wreck.
^How else does one treat a mental train wreck?
Mattress girl was the epitome of the exercise of first amendment rights. Can’t have that both ways…
What do politicals have to do with attending a college? If that is the case, bye bye IVY league universities