Study finds students becoming more liberal

The results include self-identification as left- or right-wing politically as well as opinions about the death penalty, legalization of drugs and legal status for gay marriages. This year, 29.9 percent of students identified their political views as "liberal," while 20.7 percent identified themselves as "conservative" and 49.5 percent identified themselves as "middle of the road."

A record high of 57.9 percent of students said gay marriage should be legal, and 36.5 percent said marijuana should be legalized.

Alicia Turner, Penn State College Democrats vice president, said she identifies herself as a Democrat. She said there is a wide range of variation within the political parties, so the terms "liberal" and "conservative" become cliché.

"Specific labels, they turn into dirty little words," she said. "That's why I don't like them."

Rick Smith, Penn State College Republicans spokesman, also said that political labels can be unclear.

"I think someone can label themselves something, but that doesn't necessarily encompass every single idea they might have," he said.

Amber Pawlik is president of the Independent Women's Club, a new campus organization affiliated with the Web site www.SheThinks.org that calls campus feminism a "kind of cult." Pawlik said she is not a conservative, but many members of her organization identify themselves as such.

Pawlik said the UCLA survey would be better if it involved more than just entering freshmen, who she said might not know much about politics.

"They probably don't even know what the words 'liberal' and 'conservative' mean, other than they don't like conservatives because they associate it with old, stuffy people," she said.

Pawlik also said some of the questions on the survey, such as the ones about gay marriages and the legalization of drugs, showed libertarian leanings and not liberal views. She said the study needed more questions about opinions on taxes and government spending to accurately peg levels of liberalism.

Kevin "Kip" Talley, vice president of College Libertarians, said he does not see libertarian ideas as being necessarily liberal.

"If it's a personal choice and it's not affecting other people, such as gay marriage . . . you should be able to make the best choice for yourself," he said.

The survey included more than 400,000 entering students at more than 700 colleges and universities. Almost all of the respondents were surveyed before Sept. 11, so the effects of the terrorist attacks and the American military campaign in Afghanistan are not a part of these results.

Because of President Bush's high popularity in public opinion polls since Sept. 11, at least one conflicting survey found that students are more conservative because of their support of the Republican president.

"I think people are reevaluating some of the more liberal theories in relation to real world situations," Smith said.

Turner said she has witnessed firsthand more than one political turnaround following the Sept. 11 attacks, so the survey results would change if freshmen took it now.

"I see it in a lot of people," she said.

One of Turner's friends who campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election switched to being a staunch supporter of Bush after she lost friends in the terrorist attacks.

"People are moving more conservative, so I think if they took it now they would definitely get different numbers," she said.

JoAnna Hughes, College Democrats secretary, said Sept. 11 could also have the effect of making people more liberal, which she defines as being "open minded and accepting of ideas."

"I think after (Sept. 11) people are going to be more accepting of diversity, because the whole thing basically arose from conflicting views of religions and cultures," she said.