is berkely all that liberal?

DRab
Wed, 05 Jul 2006 03:30:42 +0000

I didn’t say I didn’t care about what I write, I said I didn’t care about appeasing you (at the moment). I am aware of what you say, really. I don’t need a lecture from you. I also don’t need the seeming hypocrisy when in one sentence you say I jabbed at you and haphazardly rebuffed and in the next complain about what I’ve said and classifying it negatively or calling my arguments ridiculous. You made a 252 word post about what I should be looking for that wasn’t quite clear. Where did you argue or make clear that percentage should not be used or isn’t helpful? That actually seems incredibly important, as clearly Berkeley is quite large and if we’re dealing with size alone, we’re missing a huge aspect of reality, and based on percentages, you’re far more likely to run into the average person if they comprise a huge percentage of the population (even if they don’t comprise a large part of it compared to another place). Other arguments you make here seem incorrect or applicable to many other places making them irrelevant, such as people self-selecting other schools because of political ideology (do you think this is only true of Berkeley or more relevant here for some reason?) and the historical advantage other schools have. You also think that the voting patters of the community surrounding the area is very relevant. How is that so? Isn’t most of the “on the ground” work going to be on the campus or in its buildings? While I do think it is relevant, it seems to be much less relevant than other factors, such as the student’s political leanings. You act as if you presented myriad evidence when in fact you presented what, three things? That Berkeley students tend to identify as liberal, tended to vote for a liberal president in the last election, and that this is true of the county (or city). It seems as though you actually didn’t even present anything (other than your stories and opinions, which have their own value), but cited someone else who presented them. Is that all of you empirical evidence you include when you mention your empirical evidence?



126 (5.6%) Far left
1031 (45.7%) Liberal
830 (36.8%) Middle-of-the-road
254 (11.3%) Conservative
16 (0.7%) Far right



https://osr2.berkeley.edu/Public/STAFFWEB/DE/sons_2004_results.html

This does only account for about a tenth of the campus at the time, if you didn’t realize. I’m not sure what percentage of freshmen that was.

I really didn’t disagree or even refer to most of your points, yet you characterize me as some unthinking person unaware of what the consequences of my actions will be who is quite antagonistic towards everything you say. Could you take it down a notch? I’m not sure about you, but I’m here to generally be friendly or at least respectful to people, and in parts of your post, I really don’t feel you’re treating me with any respect. I’ll dig up what I can find in due time, but until then, it would be nice to not be attacked.

Anyway, ttg, what evidence do you have that Berkeley is the most liberal college? A lack of any evidence that other colleges are more liberal based on what seem to be your main criteron, ground level interaction (comprised of population voting patterns) and student voting patterns? Do you have data for any other school in the world prior to this point?