A long time friend, Harriet Schwartz who writes The Encouragement Lounge blog, sent me this link to the Chronicle for Higher Education. It prompted me to think about how all of the pieces fit together. The article is a good read and has tables and data which are pretty cool.
The freshman and national surveys both asked people to place themselves in one of five categories along the political spectrum. In comparisons across those categories, which were roughly similar but not identical, college students showed significantly more support for same-sex marriage than the population at large in four groups, including a 24-percentage-point difference in the center: “Middle of the road” freshmen were 68 percent supportive, while independents nationally were 44 supportive
This type of data has been used to suggest that attitudes are changing, and some gay rights activists see this as suggesting that we just need to wait a little longer and the LGBTQ communities will find full acceptance. But a few questions arise for me.
Gay Marriage is not the same as Equal Rights
This article focuses on attitudes about gay marriage specifically and compares the attitudes of incoming freshmen with the general public. I don’t know what percentage of incoming college students are married or consider getting married, or even have very well thought out ideas as to what marriage actually means. But gay marriage is not the same thing as full rights for LGBTQ communities. It is just one small sliver of rights. How does this greater support for gay marriage translate into greater support for LGBT rights overall?
Is this data really about education or generation?
What percentage of youth enter college and are therefor included in this poll? Does this difference represent a regional, economic or cultural divide? Â I wonder about this because at the same time as we see support among college freshmen rising, experts also claim that there are growing levels of bullying of youth happening in high schools and even earlier education. How do we understand a rise in the bullying of gay youth with this data? Is this a matter that incidents of bullying are not actually on the rise, but simply gaining more visibility? Or are the measures being put in place to counter bullying having a broader impact and helping to change attitudes about LGBTs as well as decrease violence against youth?
What is a Conservative Anyway?
The data reported here is based on student’s self identification of their political views across the spectrum. I think this demonstrates something I’ve been writing about and many others have discussed as well. Old notions of what it means to be a conservative, or a liberal are changing. this old-regime Democrat/Republican divide is no longer a useful method to describe political philosophies. Even the newer notion of “progressive” may not really represent the shifting political viewpoints and speak to the ways young adults view things.
What do you think about these ideas and what the viewpoints of college students may mean? Leave a comment and help generate a discussion.
Tells of Brother's School Torment and revealing the problems his sibling faced in his youth. During a conversation with the College of New Jersey's student.
Hi Tom, You raise good questions. Regarding your question about who this survey captures… I can tell you that it should be a very good cross-section of college-enrolled young people. From the org that does the survey: “Each year, approximately 700 two-year colleges, four-year colleges and universities administer the Freshman Survey to over 400,000 entering students during orientation or registration.” Thus, it captures community college students and Ivy League students, and everything in between. It is also national in scope.
So, does the rise in bullying represent: students who are not college-bound, students are college bound, but among those who are not GLBT-accepting, or as you said, not an increase in bullying, but an increase in reporting (and in fact clarifying that particular bullying incidents are glbt-related)?
I think you last point in that section, are the counter-bullying measures helping to change attitudes — wouldn't that be interesting!
Thanks for spending time with the survey data and sharing your thoughts.
Thanks for your comment!