<p>Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.</p>
<p>“As a mechanism whose intention is to craft a class whose political representation more closely matches that of the nation . . .”</p>
<p>Inasmuch as 45%-55% of the elligible Americans do not vote on any given election, maybe schools should actively recruit applicants who don’t care ;)</p>
<p>^ The rub is that apathetic people can not fairly be expected to complete a college application, with burdensome essays and such. Maybe auto-acceptance for incomplete applications is the solution to this troubling problem of self-selection and inequality.</p>
<p>Well, your physical anthropology course presumably mentioned evolution and your plant identification course presumably hinted at evolution, and your physical geography course may have hinted that the Earth was more than a few thousand years old, so that may count as “radical left wing” to some social or religious conservatives.</p>
<p>Of course, in almost any humanities or social studies course, people with strong political views (whether right wing or left wing or something else) are likely to complain that the teaching of such a course is somehow politically biased. Then again, science gets targeted also, such as global warming as well as evolution.</p>
<p>On the other hand, conservatives who are conservatives mainly in non-social and religious areas are more commonly found both as students and faculty on college campuses.</p>
<p>I fail to see why political views would have an effect on the things which currently are a factor in admissions. Why would being a liberal or conservative have an effect on ACT scores or GPA? It doesn’t. If it happens to be that students at colleges tend to be more liberal than the average person of their demographic, it doesn’t mean that the root cause if liberal views. Colleges also have an over representation of Asians and Females, groups which tend to be more liberal than their non-Asian and Male counterparts. As such, the whole proposed premise of this topic is just silly. </p>
<p>I suspect that the OP (I haven’t read through the whole thread) may have been hinting that you can claim any group which is underrepresented should be given admissions boost in the guise of improving diversity. I suspect his point is that the push for diversity that many colleges boast is a lie, or that affirmative action as is in place in most universities today is an ill-conceived policy.</p>
<p>Wow! Asians tend to be more liberal than non-Asians?? What’s the working definition of liberal here?</p>
<p>If we’re talking liberal in the modern American social and political sense…that’s completely opposite of my own experiences having grown up as Asian-American in the '80s and '90s and being in constant contact with various Asian-American communities growing up and among classmates. </p>
<p>IME, most Asian-American families and classmates I’ve known growing up tend to be center-right or conservative with some degree of conservative libertarian elements. </p>
<p>With a few exceptions, most tend to identify strongly with corporate type careers, have an excess degree of uncritical respect for established authority figures, support pro corporate business/establishment policies, cutting taxes, aspire to live and conform to upper/upper-middle class suburban norms, measure others heavily by their fiscal net worth/business prowess, etc. </p>
<p>They also tend to detest public challenges to business/establishment/governments like protests…especially by those with lower socio-economic status, social welfare programs, those who don’t conform/completely reject upper-middle class suburban norms, those who reject measuring others by fiscal net worth/business prowess, those who have critical skepticism of established authority figures, etc. </p>
<p>I’m wondering if there has been a greater seachange in attitudes among Asian-Americans within the last decade…especially in the Gen X and millennial generations. Noticed some of this in my former HS classmates…especially if they were younger. Not counting my college-classmates as most Asian-Americans there tended to be radical-left to begin with as with most of the student body at my LAC back when I was in college in the mid-late '90s.</p>
<p>You went through a lot of effort to say I was wrong. The only place I’ve met any Asians is a very liberal city so maybe my experience is skewed and maybe I am wrong. Regardless, it’s not really the crux of my argument.</p>
<p>“With a few exceptions, most [Asians] tend to identify strongly with corporate type careers, have an excess degree of uncritical respect for established authority figures, support pro corporate business/establishment policies, cutting taxes, aspire to live and conform to upper/upper-middle class suburban norms, measure others heavily by their fiscal net worth/business prowess, etc.” </p>
<p>Actually, ucbalumnus, my Physical Anthropology Professor, Vincent Sarich at UCB, was somewhat of a social Darwinist and got himself in hot water with the left from time to time. That is an interesting conundrum though . . . can Young Earthers and Social Darwinists really be on the same side of the fence? ;)</p>
<p>So say an elite college in the North East has 1,000 applicants with exactly the same objective qualifications but can admit only 100 of these. Of these 1,000 people 50 are URMs. Of the non-URMs, 750 are liberals and 150 are conservatives. </p>
<p>The administration of this school has decided they would like to have a student body with10% URMs for whatever institutional goals. If they were to act blindly, of course, only 5 URMs would be accepted, so they must purposely tip the balance slightly to reach the desired number of 10. </p>
<p>If they decided they needed an equal number of liberals and conservatives from the non-URM pool, they would have to identify and favor conservative applicants substantially (admitting about 1 in 16 liberals as opposed to 1 in 4 conservatives).</p>
<p>This kind of favoritism would not only be anathema to conservative principles, but I imagine it would cause all kinds of problems for conservative students who would have to live with the stigma of favoritism that unfortunately URMs often suffer.</p>
<p>It is a separate question as to why there is such a preponderance of liberal applicants–It could be self-selection as SlitheyTove explained, or there could be other demographics at work. In any case, URMS are considered to have historical and societal disadvantages that warrant tipping the odds in their favor. Can the same be argued for conservative viewpoints?</p>
<p>Lots of stereotyping going on here. Not all conservatives are rabid. </p>
<p>Most kids who apply (and my experience is with a top school,) can’t articulate their views, fall back on a hs level of expression where ardency (and some formulaic thinking) replaces some higher level of actual thought. We’re interested when any kid can show well-considered ideas and back them up with a pattern of actions that also shows the energy to get engaged in legit ways. </p>
<p>That does include political diversity. We know a kid who’s better suited to a highly conservative college will likely not be happy at this school. But, there are plenty of places for diversity of thought. There are plenty of organizations on campus, professors either conservative or their own or interested in multiple perspectives- and other, like kids. Plenty of opportunities for political action, involvement with social causes- both here and in the area. </p>
<p>Diversity notions encompass far more than what usually comes to mind on CC.</p>
<p>Just relaying my observations growing up as an Asian-American in the '80s & '90s, being in frequent contact in various Asian-American communities through family and classmates*, being able to understand & converse in an Asian language, observing which political parties/policies they tended to favor, and putting on my Comparative Politics minor hat. </p>
<p>I’ve also acknowledged there was a possible sea change in political outlooks among younger Asian-Americans in the last decade which possibly explained the more recent data. However, I’m wondering if the pollsters had a sufficient sample size of older Asian-Americans(Earlier half of Gen X and older). </p>
<ul>
<li>East Coast, West Coast, and even a part of the deep South. Interestingly enough, the branch of my family in the last tends to be among the most liberal in my family in social issues…but center-right at best on fiscal ones.</li>
</ul>
<p>Why not have affirmative action for obese students, or short (or should I say “vertically challenged”) or any other group that feels discriminated against and wish to have greater representation on campuses.</p>
<p>Re: Asian Americans and political conservatism</p>
<p>What I have noticed is that Asian Americans are often personally conservative in their habits, but not attracted to conservative politicians who push social conservatism. Social conservatism is often tinged with hostility to an outgroup relative to the ingroup whom the politician primarily markets to. Asian Americans often perceive themselves as more likely to be the outgroup (as ethnic minorities, naturalizing immigrants, or children of naturalizing immigrants) when hearing such politicians speak.</p>
<p>The same appears to be the case for Mexican Americans and African Americans to some extent.</p>