<p>PizzaGirl,</p>
<p>As the mother of one of those annoying environmentally concerned college students, I almost spit out my coffee when I burst into laughter at your post. Thanks!</p>
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<p>Are you perhaps a congressman who is willing to dismiss another’s views so readily and easily in one pithy statement?</p>
<p>I remember UVa as being very liberal when I was in college during the Vietnam War. There were even rumors that they were going to come down to our school (W&L) and not wear coats and ties. We were scandalized!</p>
<p>Seriously, even back in the 60’s W&L had a professor who was openly gay. Now as a conservative, I live in NPR Land where it is so blue that the town counsel wastes its time passing resolutions to send on to Washington and is willing to spend thousands of dollars to protest the Citizens United decision. My son, who is really a moderate, joined the HS “Underground Republicans” club, mostly because he likes to be the devil’s advocate. All of our friends know that I am conservative and therefore rarely want to discuss ideas with me that would disturb their visions. I have no designs on political office, so I see no reason, yet, to move.</p>
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<p>I can understand that. I myself cringe when I see kids on this site saying they want to go to a particular college because it has a good football team, or because it’s in a big city, or because it’s not in a big city, or … But then I remind myself, diff’rent strokes fer diff’rent folks.</p>
<p>I agree that choosing a school based on its football team is questionable, but why not choose based on whether it’s in a big city or small town? That seems reasonable, considering they’ll spend four years there.</p>
<p>Well, I wasn’t really planning to start a debate on the wisdom of picking a school based on the size of town, but since you asked <grin> … Because they will only spend four years there, whereas what they do there during those four years will affect them for the rest of their lives. Add to that the reality that most students spend most of their time on campus involved with campus activities anyway, and it seems to me that the size of town should be way down the list. It certainly should not be #1 or #2 in the list of selection criteria, as it seems to be for many posters here.</grin></p>
<p>Certainly students who attend a school in the middle of corn country will spend most of their time on campus, but it seems as though students in New York and Chicago spend much of their free time in the city. But I agree with you if we’re talking about the difference between, say, Tulsa and St. Louis. That’s not a big enough difference to get hung up on, in my opinion.</p>
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<p>Agreed, Tulsa (pop. 391,906) is not so much bigger than St. Louis (pop. 319,294) that is should make much difference. LOL. Seriously, though, the metro area population of St. Louis is just under 3 million; of Tulsa, around 1 million. I do think that makes some difference to some people. If you’re into pro sports, for example. Or if you’re from far away, say the East or West Coast, it could mean sufficiently better transportation options that the bigger city is an inexpensive 2-3 hour nonstop flight from home as opposed to a costly day-long trip from the smaller place, which could in turn decide, for example, whether you get home at Thanksgiving or for Mom’s birthday. I don’t say these should be overriding considerations, but I wouldn’t just blow them off as trivial, either.</p>
<p>Back to the OP’s question: I think most Southern college towns, except those with religiously affiliated colleges, are going to be among the most liberal places in their respective states. But Tuscaloosa, for example, is not going to be as liberal as Madison, Eugene, Berkeley, or Ann Arbor. Chapel Hill may be closer to the Madison-Eugene-Berkeley-Ann Arbor end of the spectrum, but I suspect (never having spent much time there) just a tad more centrist, or perhaps “balanced” if you want to look at it that way. I have spent more time in Charlottesville, and it’s liberal by Virginia standards, but it’s no Berkeley. For better or for worse.</p>
<p>“I remember UVa as being very liberal when I was in college during the Vietnam War. There were even rumors that they were going to come down to our school (W&L) and not wear coats and ties. We were scandalized!”</p>
<p>When my dad was an undergrad at UVa, students were turned away from class if they weren’t in a coat and tie!</p>
<p>He recalls one story of an interview one of his friends had with one of the deans/professors. The kid went out and bought all new clothes, and came to the interview dressed to the nines and the guy, after scanning him from head to toe said “I won’t interview anyone who isn’t wearing wingtips” and sent the kid away.</p>
<p>One time my dad didn’t wear a tie to class (he was a jew from urban nj) and the professor asked him to stay after class. In his southern twang, the professor said to him, “I don’t like northerners, son, and I really don’t like jews.”</p>
<p>Those are a couple of my favorite of my dads UVa stories from back in the day (it was all boys then).</p>
<p>Not to give the school a bad name…I almost went there and he loved it!</p>
<p>It’s all relative. What one person calls ‘liberal’ or ‘diverse’, I can tell ya it makes me laugh out loud (because from my liberal perspective world, it would be considered conservative). </p>
<p>To me it’s not just political, or even political. It’s a world of very different values. I find it fascinating that when I see a poster repeatedly writing viewpoints on this forum that are non-political but that I fundamentally disagree with, invariably they end up describing themselves as conservative at some point (such as on this thread).</p>
<p>I would support spending millions of dollars to protest and oppose the Citizens United decision. Permitting unaccountable and unlimited funding to be funnelled to political candidates is an obvious and direct threat to democracy. I would say that is $ well spent by your city attorney.</p>
<p>Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Asheville, App State, NC Arts and Salem College are all very, very liberal.</p>
<p>it’s odd how people have a certain picture of the south-I was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida by two very moderate parents. when I went to college in Savannah people asked if I was from the “north” since I did not have a southern accent. True, there are any number of colleges/universities who may have the preppy/conservative student profile, but I strongly agree with many posters who have said the majority of college professors are very liberal and enjoy sharing their opinions with their students. Our 2 kids are rising seniors at one of the "bastions of southern education <grin)>, Furman University. In the last presidential election, Obama won the campus vote by more than several percentage points, and perhaps of equal importance, when then President Bush came to Furman as the commencement speaker, a large number of professors protested by either not attending or wearing t-shirts with a No-bush logo and turning their backs during the ceremony. So to say Furman fits the conservative profile, is iMO, an exaggeration. My experience says the southern school that more accurately describe what the OP is talking about would be SMU, Sewanee ( maybe), many of the all girls colleges, VMI, perhaps Wofford. Wake is, IMO a fairly conservative, preppy school with a big Greek scene.</grin)></p>
<p>There are a number of schools in the South known for a diverse student population: Emory, Davidson, Duke, W and M, Tulane, UNC-A, definitely Guilford and New College of Florida. Our daughter has spent 2 fall semesters at Georgia Tech-not your quintessential “southern” school. Our experience from visiting is that Rhodes is a fairly mixed population of kids, while Vandy to our kids, seemed very conservative.</p>
<p>As my husband pointed out when our kids left for college, if kids do not experience a liberal bent or change their views about many things, he is surprised. Our kids’ study abroad programs this past year have influenced a lot of their thinking on the global economy, etc.</p>
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<p>Does Texas qualify as a Southern state? Does it flagship school qualify as a Southern school. Then the liberal-minded should rejoice that the Texas flagship school (the University of Texas at … Austin) definitely veers to the left and is in a town that does the same to a sickening level. </p>
<p>The students who happen to spend four to six years at a school and the school’s faculty are not necessarily espousing what the constituents of the southern states believe.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I also thought of UT Austin when I first saw this thread but the OP was asking for school’s under 10,000:</p>
<p>"If my logic is off-base can you give me some examples of southern schools smaller than 10,000 that are more liberal? "</p>
<p>I would guess that at larger schools you can usually find the niche you are looking for. I’ll bet there’s even a minority liberal population at TAMU. But really, do you think UT Austin is that liberal. Sure Austin is (but I wouldn’t call it a sickening level, it just stands out next to the rest of the state), but UT Austin is populated by students from all over Texas. I always had the feeling that while UT is liberal for Texas the student body is probably less liberal than schools in the Northeast or California. (Even some that are so called conservative schools). But from what I know of UT Austin the OP would be comfortable with that population if the size was not overwelming.</p>
<p>Yes, UT is liberal, but I don’t particularly find Austin to be as oh so liberal as people say. I think it’s because the people who are impressed by Austin’s liberalness are people from Texas, where Austin sticks out like a sore thumb. It wouldn’t be some amazing great liberal town if you stuck it up north.</p>
<p>people seem to be using “conservative” vs “liberal” in terms of the current balance of US politics - a campus with equal numbers of dems vs reps would be “balanced” I can understand why people put things that way, but in either a global or historical context, thats somewhat limited.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned northerners who name their hamster after Mike Dukakis.</p>
<p>When I was in college I met Mike Dukakis. that was before his presidential campaign - during his second go round as governor of Massachusetts - the term where he had switched from his earlier traditional liberalism to an approach that was more probusinne, and friendly to Mass’ growing tech sector in particular. He represented a moderate shift in the Mass Democratic party. </p>
<p>On my campus, where the majority of students liked Ted Kennedy more, Mike’s positions were moderately to the RIGHT of most of the student body. More importantly, there was a large minority on campus, including many of the most brilliant and most sensitive students, who took Marx seriously. While I personally am not a Marxist (his economics were misguided IMO, for one thing) he was an important, indeed a towering figure in western intellectual history - especially in sociology and historical analysis. </p>
<p>I think a campus where centrists like Obama define the “left” (or worse, are considered “socialists”) would be one that many, many students would find intellectually confining (and before someone makes an argument for symetrical intellectual confinement in the other direction, I would point out that the same campus I described above included key advocates of Straussian political thought and the neoconservative movement) My own DD will be attending RPI, which I suspect will be far more conservative than the campus where I went to college, and where there will be few if any Marxists. But I also presume its not a campus where an intellectual Marxist would be disrespected as such, nor where Democrats who are so moderate its painful, would be routinely considered “socialists”.</p>
<p>Emory </p>
<p>10 charac</p>
<p>Austin is only liberal if you’re from Texas. I lived in West Texas for six years and they would go on and on about the liberal freaks in Austin. Of course this was a city where job promotions wete based on what church you went to. They would probably pass out from sheer terror if they ever went to New York or San Francisco. I don’t find UT all that liberal either. Compared to the rest of the state maybe, but not a bastion of liberalism by a long shot.</p>