Just another anecdote – we know a student at Wake, freshman, who comes from liberal Democrat family, and he has loved his experience at Wake, and has not described any trouble with intolerance of diversity of views etc.
OP, you know what would be a good new discussion to start? “Finding a University without strong political leanings/ Possible to find?” would be a good overall topic and would bring in more than just WF followers.
Some things to be aware of:
- Commuter universities tend to have lower levels of political activity in general, although that does not necessarily mean anything about whether the students are left or right leaning.
- College students tend to lean left relative to the general adult population because younger people tend to lean left relative to the general adult population. Of course, specific colleges may have self-selection effects of students who tend to lean more left or right.
- Even a group of college students that is centrist (or left or right) overall will have students who are away from the center of that group.
- When politics are associated with race/ethnicity, they can get "hot" (nasty, bigoted) very quickly. Students' viewpoints may be affected by what race/ethnicity they are, since it may be more threatening when someone is arguing against an inherent characteristic of yours than when someone is arguing some idea relating to actions that you or someone else may choose to participate in or not (e.g. many economic arguments).
As a current freshman at Wake, this was one of my main conflicts when I first came here. I am an African-American woman from a low-income family, so you can imagine how much adversity I face on campus.
I will say that the conservatism is not out front. there are not people wearing MAGA apparel and marching up and down the quad. Rather, their true colors come out when we have things like protests about certain topics. The student body turns their backs against things that don’t directly affect them. we had a DACA protest in front of Wait Chapel earlier this year, hardly anyone showed, and most people just walked past, going on with whatever they had been doing before simply because it didn’t affect them directly. If you’re looking for a place that you say 'Hey, this thing is going to affect a group of people in America and I want to bring awareness to it", this may not be the place for you. I will say that you won’t be alone, people will give you support, but it won’t be as many as you would want.
Everyone is talking about being exposed to other ideas and cultures and whatnot- if you don’t want to do that at Wake, you really don’t have to.
Speaking as a fairly progressive parent, I would say that your student will not be frequently confronted with political views he/she would find distasteful. However, neither will he/she be surrounded by students who are politically active/progressive, or who have a strong affinity for identity politics.
My impression has been that most students at Wake come from wealthy or professional families and are mostly focused on maintaining that status for themselves through a career in business or one of the professions. Politically active/progressive liberal arts majors have less social traction here and in general are not catered to by the school in terms of career development.
In conclusion, your student’s racial and political background will not be necessarily be a social or academic handicap, but it certainly won’t be an advantage.