A couple of recent experiences made me consider how much weight a college’s homogeneous nature should have in the college choice process. I’ve come to think that attending a college with political and/or religious leanings heavily skewed to one side of the bell curve is a serious problem.
As a life-long liberal, I’ve been completely uninterested in my offspring (who are also left-leaning politically) attending a college like Liberty or even ones like Calvin College or Hillsdale. I’ve come around to the thought that attending a college like Occidental also may be a poor decision.
Here’s how I came to this conclusion.
First, Occidental. I had read about the recent Oxy sexual assault case and the apparent rush to judgement reportedly encouraged by the administration (don’t care to make this thread a rehashing of this event). For those that have toured Oxy, you will know it makes a big deal about President Obama being a former student on two occasions (stopping to point out what is known as the Presidential Suite in one dorm and stopping for several minutes in front of an Obama display in the library). (BTW, I like Obama and would vote for him a third time if given a choice.) In addition, the student newspaper prints stories/editorials that nearly ubiquitously favor left-leaning ideas. In short, Oxy seems to be a nearly homogeneous pot of left-leaning groupthink.
The second experience I had was watching ESPN’s recent 30-for-30 documentary on the Duke lacrosse rape scandal that occurred back in 2006/7. Highly recommend this film! It chronicles the cauldron of several stereotypes, groupthink, and rush to judgement that resulted in the wrongful indictment of a few players and disbarment of a rouge DA (among other things). It’s the groupthink involving the media, student body, and criminal justice system that I found most repulsive. In this case, it’s again left-leaning groupthink.
IMO, college ideally should be about engaging people with different views during the academic process. I don’t think an environment like Liberty or Oxy is conducive to this academic process. In honing a college list for my Ds, I didn’t give much weight to whether or not a college had a groupthink mentality, but I’m now reconsidering this approach.
Would like to hear other’s thoughts.
I think you make some very good points, it’s exactly why I wouldn’t send my kids to a Bible college. As a political conservative, however, it seems to me that in academia the groupthink is highly concentrated on the other side. A conservative knows going in that he/she is going to get scant support for their beliefs at any of the top 100 universities or LACs.
What percentage of tenured faculty in the humanities voted for Obama vs. Romney in the last election, do you think? (Humanities, because those are the courses where personal views will come up in discussion. The political beliefs of a math, chemistry, or engineering professor are essentially irrelevant to the academic experience.)
I lean liberal, though not populist, yet felt like Rush Limbaugh on our tour of Swarthmore some years back. I think your points are well taken. Both my liberal kids went to schools with balance and sure they carried the blue flag, but maybe learned a thing or two from intelligent people who thought differently.
My hope is that openness to other people’s legitimate concerns will move our country forward.
Your level of tolerance for intolerance depends on what issues you personally hold dear. Most people are fine with controversy except when the controversy threatens their personal views specifically. Ironically, democracy can make a lot of people feel “oppressed.” If you live in America, at some point in your life, you will hold the minority view. Unfortunately during those times, the majority view will feel downright suffocating. This is what you sign up for when you sign up for democracy. I think we have to prepare our kids to accept that they be hold a minority view on any number of social/political issues that t because that’s real life in America.
I think any college where one political leaning is common to 80% of students is to be treated with care. A major factor in my choice of university was the fact that it had several prominent right-leaning academics and has long been known as a bastion of freshwater economics. Not that I’m conservative - I’m left of center on economic issues, and roughly in line with your average millennial on social issues. I just want an environment where my views will be challenged. An opinion that can’t withstand one debate with intelligent advocates of another stance is an opinion I should probably reconsider.
In most instances, I think the student ought to be the one to make the decision about which school to attend-not the parents. Political, religious and value-ladden leanings are variables, among others, I’d discuss with my kids as being worthwhile to consider. But then it would be up to them C Bible College or Oberlin–their choice. I’d cringe with one of those but…I’d suck it up.
I totally agree with you about the desirability of going somewhere with a variety of views. I’m in a mixed marriage (I’m a Democrat and husband is a moderate Republican - one of the few remaining). Our D is cursed with the ability to see both sides of an issue (she was also a high school debater), which has been a liability for her at times at her LAC. She went off to college imagining lofty intellectual discussions in the wee hours of the night with her peers. The reality is unfortunately a bit different because fellow students can be very quick to attach labels to anyone who is suspected of deviant thinking. In general, I think groupthink can be a bigger problem at a smaller school where there can be more pressure to conform or face the consequences. But I also agree with @lostaccount that parents ultimately need to let the kid pick the college.
I think you made the right decision by not weighing groupthink…because it’s too hard to weigh it. just because students at a given university identify one way or the other isn’t a sign f groupthink. And groupthink can plague any institution. We have to train our kids not to succumb and to be aware of it. I think the rush to judgement at Duke was exactly that…a rush to judgment. Nothings going to stop that when highly publicized and emotional crimes take place at institutions that feel their reputation is on the line. And of course ten years later the ESPN documentary can shed light on what no one or few could see at the time. Even if you go to a large university with the entire spectrum of viewpoints you will likely end up hanging out in a “group” with similar viewpoints. Your job is to expose your kid to a variety of college environments and let them choose…Don’t limit them by your fears of groupthink.
EIGHT SIGNS OF GROUPTHINK
Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.
Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.
Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.
Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.
Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.
Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.
Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.
Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.
I like this thread, because this topic has come up several times in our household. We are conservative with some stuff, liberal-ish with some stuff, and flat out liberal with others, and try and resist labels as much as possible. The four of us have come to the conclusion that picking a school that is politically very active or socially very skewed is a distraction from learning.
I’m currently attending college as an adult learner (commuting, obviously), and ran into some serious nastiness between two groups over abortion. They had dueling tri-fold info boards set up and I tried to avoid running the gauntlet by ducking into and cutting through the food court. A girl grabbed my arm and tried to pull me towards the gauntlet saying “you need to vote for my board”.
I dropped into Terrifying Dragon Mom mode (I’m very tall) and said 'take your hand off of me if you want to keep it." I had to say “No” and glare at several more students balefully before I could get to class. This sort of indoctrination is ridiculous on either side of the issue, and I had to get to class on time (I have a 40 mile each way commute).
As somebody famously said “ain’t nobody got time for that.” It did make for a very animated dinner discussion that night, that was the silver lining. The girls (15 and 17) were shocked that stuff like this was happening even on my podunk campus.
I’ve got a liberal daughter at Wellesley and a slightly conservative son at Oberlin. Most LACs are left-leaning. Whether a conservative can fit in at such a place depends more on the intelligence of his/her peers and the intellectual rigor of the school than just about anything else. An intelligent liberal or conservative may be wed to his or her POV, but has the capacity to understand and accept that others might think differently. But a dull-witted person of either extreme is unlikely to value a different perspective. And a school like Liberty, which is not rigorous and has a very narrow view (they actually fined students who did not attend Ted Cruz’s speech) is not suitable for an intellectual liberal or conservative.
@Massmomm
It should be noted that Liberty didn’t fine students who didn’t attend because Ted Cruz was speaking; they fined those students because Cruz spoke during Liberty’s convocation, and attendance at convocation is mandatory no matter what’s on the agenda. It’s like a fine for failing to attend a school assembly (which would of course be highly unusual).
@NotVerySmart, you are correct, but the school was a bit disingenuous in making a political stump speech part of a convocation. It is supposed to be a religious/educational session.
My youngest attended Tufts and discovered he was not as liberal as he thought or at least was a different kind of liberal than a lot of kids on campus. He had very little patience with a lot of the politics on campus. Interestingly, he voted for Bernie and is joining the Navy.
I agree the kid should chose the college, but I have to say there are some schools I would not be willing to write a check to. There was no possibility any of my kids would choose to attend such a school so kind of a moot point. But I think parents have the right to veto certain colleges if the parents are the ones paying. Of course that should happen at application time.