I think OP is basically correct about the CMC climate. My D is an Econ major at Pomona. Just FYI, Walker Wall is a communal wall on the Pomona campus. The words “F*** DONALD TRUMP AND HIS SMALL HANDS” have been painted on it in hyuuuge letters since August. For several weeks it has also said “NO MORE WARS F*** HILLARY.” So I gues that’s political diversity. But I’m sure that if someone painted “F*** TRIGGER WARNINGS” it would promptly disappear.
My suggestion is always to look at the student newspapers (online versions) to get a sense of the current climate on campus. Also sometimes the Facebook page for the student newspaper, especially the comment section. Actually at the moment The Student Life, the Pomona newspaper, has a problem with its website or I would’ve linked to an article about Walker Wall.
Pomona certainly has the mix of hard science types. CMC also has the Athenaeum which generally has great speakers. And the rest of the consortium adds to the mix. But if by “robust political debate” you mean among students in the dorms and dining halls, then I think that is in much shorter supply. My D has taken classes in politics, history and philosophy. In the classroom my D is willing to engage despite feeling like she’s in the minority in defending capitalism and US foreign policy. But she says she’s “checked out of campus politics” due to the strong potential for social backlash if you say something unpopular. On the plus side her professors are very engaging. One has even arranged to send her to a conference in New York in a few weeks on issues of free speech, political discourse and safe spaces, at Pomona expense, because he knew of her interest in those topics.
Yep. As @Corinthian is implying, Pomona, Mudd, Scripps, and Pitzer are all overwhelmingly liberal. Pitzer and Mudd are about as liberal as one could get among any college in the country, Pomona/Scripps are close but do have small conservative student populations, and CMC is more balanced but definitely has more Hilary supporters than Trump.
At least at Pomona, there are definitely debates which feature dissenting viewpoints (sponsored by the Pomona Student Union), there are events in which one can view debates from many parties, there are definitely students who are politically driven and active, and so forth. But the vast majority of cheer and support will be for those which support a left-leaning ideology. It’s unfortunate to say that being a conservative may earn you disapproval from the a good number of the campus community. This isn’t a Pomona only thing- I’ve seen similar things among most top liberal art colleges and some of the more liberal universities (undergrads at Brown/Columbia/U’Chicago/etc.).
@nostalgicwisdom did you mix up Mudd and Scripps in your post #22? It would make more sense to me to say Pitzer and Scripps are as liberal as one could get.
Perhaps not surprising, since younger people (including those of traditional college student age) generally lean left compared to the overall voting population. The left lean can be expected to be even greater at colleges with larger non-white and/or female populations.
Also, specific candidate characteristics may make certain nominally-conservative candidates less appealing to conservative college students (and more noxious to liberal college students) than more typical conservative candidates ordinarily would be.
Along the above lines, the mainstream USA Today recently opined against a particular presidential candidate, which I believe was unprecedented with respect to the paper’s history. Under an environment such as this, U.S. college students – to the extent that they can be categorized as a group – should not necessarily be expected to continue to examine all candidates within their serious discussions.
At the risk of stating the obvious, there’s a lot more to “political debate” than the current Presidential election. I interpreted the OP’s use of “robust political debate” to mean debating competing viewpoints on a wide range of topics whether it’s gun control, foreign policy, transgender rights, Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Black Lives Matter issues, the list goes on and on. My D is a Democrat and HRC supporter but still finds herself categorized as being conservative or worse on various topics. That’s why she has, in her words, “checked out” of campus politics and keeps her debating of issues in the classroom.
Ohio State has a very strong political science department and the John Glenn school of public policy. Won’t meet full need, but you might qualify for good merit scholarship. There’s also Rice, WashU, Tulane, . . .
Tufts is quite liberal, but it has a Republicans club. Scott Brown is an alum. Tufts has a small engineering school that tends to be liberal for an engineering school, but is a little more conservative than the liberal arts school. International Relations and Computer Science are the two largest majors. There are some very good debaters on campus - last year the debate team beat Yale for the national championship. Meets full need for financial aid.
You will find that many of the top LAC’s (Williams, SWAT, Amherst, Pomona, etc) teem with political correctness. If you want less of that, I’d recommend (as someone previously mentioned) universities in the DC area or universities in the South (Vandy or Duke). Of course all colleges are different, but I haven’t heard of (or ever visited) a top LAC that isn’t overly PC.
