<p>I'm curious as to where UChicago's student body align themselves politically...Would you say Chicago has a liberal student body? Conservative? A fair mix? How are things like homosexuality, among others, accepted on campus? Or does everyone just not care about politics and are accepting of everyone?</p>
<p>I'm just curious.</p>
<p>To broadly overgeneralize, it's heavily liberal with a good dose of libertarianism. Chicago is notoriously progressive (among other things, the school was home to an underground abortion clinic before abortion was legalized). The student body is largely made up of young, academically-oriented people, and it's located in a major city, so it's naturally going to be quite liberal in makeup.</p>
<p>Chicago's economics department also means that a lot of people walking around are going to lean free-market ("conservative," in a word). Bear in mind that this is very different from being a "conservative" in the traditional sense, and most of these people would be considered socially liberal. </p>
<p>The school has a sizeable homosexual population, and people couldn't be more accepting. You'd have a much harder time coming out in favor of the Iraq war than you would as a gay person.</p>
<p>The nice thing about Chicago is that people are tolerant of others no matter what their viewpoints, which fosters a huge diversity of opinion on campus (and isn't that what college is all about?). It's liberal, but not so hyperliberal as to be obnoxious, and prevent you from actually hearing different points of view every once in a while.</p>
<p>Ditto on what jack said.</p>
<p>The LGBTQ population here is sizable, but does not call much attention to itself. My gay friends feel comfortable here, and my friends who oppose homosexuality on moral/religious grounds (I have one or two who think homosexuality is a sin), have learned how to separate their personal beliefs from their friendships with gay people, in a sort of "judge the sin, not the sinner" kind of way.</p>
<p>Some links:
<a href="http://lgbtq.uchicago.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://lgbtq.uchicago.edu/</a>
<a href="http://republicans.uchicago.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://republicans.uchicago.edu/</a>
<a href="http://ucdems-home.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D">http://ucdems-home.blogspot.com/</a>
(it's more active than the website lets on, I promise!)</p>
<p>Students are socially liberal with a few exceptions--generally on religious grounds. Economically students are across the map, with fiscally conservative econ majors, a fairly sizable Marxist-like group, and a whole bunch in between.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the info. IMO, though I'm a pretty liberal-thinking person, I like to have balance. Balance of political thought provides for debate and an equality amount of thought given to two sides of an issue.</p>
<p>That said, I also appreciate schools that are accepting to homosexuals and others aswell. </p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>Are you gay?</p>
<p>(Is that an inappropriate question?)</p>
<p>But, yeah, students at Chicago are in general quite thoughtful, which means hate/fear/dislike/disgust/etc. based on ignorance is very rare.</p>
<p>No, I'm not homosexual, but I have close lesbian and gay friends. I want to go to a place where my potential friends, and I for that matter, are not looked down upon.</p>
<p>I think that most college campuses are pretty gay-friendly.</p>
<p>Here's another thread discussing campus activism on the UChicago Livejournal community-- it will give you a sense of the broad personal and political range of U of C kids.</p>