Student Life

Lean to the Left, Lean to the Right

Berkeley freshmen are more liberal and less religious than their nationwide counterparts — but a campus survey finds their views on some social issues are closer to the national norm than labels suggest

By Bonnie Azab Powell

Who says conservatives don't have a sense of humor? Though still a minority at Berkeley, they are vocal and visible on Sproul Plaza. Jonathan King photo.

Spring 2005 | Should abortion remain legal? Did going to war in Iraq make America a safer place? Do same-sex couples have the right to legal marital status?

Yes, no, and yes, said a substantial majority of respondents on the fall 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen. Perhaps this does not surprise you. However, consider some of the survey’s other findings: just 51.2% of first-year respondents think of themselves as liberal. More than a third (36.8%) deem their political views “middle of the road,” while 12% are proud to claim membership in that elusive (but vocal) species, the Berkeley conservative.

That’s because Berkeley’s been moving steadily mainstream ever since the Age of Aquarius and Vietnam War-era campus radicalism, right? Wrong, according to the campus Office of Student Research (OSR), which has administered this survey for decades.

In fact, students today are a lot more liberal than they were during the 1980s. Back in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president, Berkeley conservatives had a respectable market share of 20.8% of freshmen, compared with 32.9% for liberals. And almost a majority, 46.4%, of 1982 Berkeley first-year students lounged comfortably between the left and right political lanes. The pendulum has since swung left, and 2004 freshmen are only slightly less liberal than they were in 1972, when 56.5% of freshmen called themselves liberals; the number of conservatives was also in the same ballpark, 10.5%.

Gender blender
OSR Director Gregg Thomson was intrigued enough by this arc to run some additional analyses of past survey data, including averages from a national survey of freshmen at four-year universities. In 1982 Berkeley came its closest to mirroring the political makeup of the average group of university freshmen: 19.4% of freshmen nationally that year called themselves conservative (versus 20.8% at Berkeley). In 2004, although liberals also outnumbered conservatives among college freshmen nationwide, it was by a slim margin, with a solid majority calling themselves middle of the road. (See Figure 1.)

That a Berkeley freshman tends to be more liberal than the average freshman is again not surprising. What is interesting is that somehow Berkeley’s leftward view has remained fairly constant, even as the ethnic makeup of the university’s freshman class has changed markedly since 1972. The percentage of Asian and underrepresented minority freshmen has gone from 16.3% and 5.3% in 1972, respectively, to 45.1% and 13% in 2004. Asian students of both genders were more likely to choose “middle of the road” to describe their political views, while underrepresented minority students are the least likely to: 43.8% of Asian freshmen declared themselves neutral, compared with 36.4% of students who are not Asian or white.

Berkeley’s white students are the most liberal ethnic group, at 59.9%. White women were the most liberal group of all Berkeley freshmen, at 65.9%; only 52.4% of white male freshmen were liberal. Mirroring the makeup of the Republican party and conservative freshmen nationwide, Berkeley conservatives are not only more likely to be male, they’re more likely to be white males. In 2004, 18.8% of white male freshmen at Berkeley were conservative, compared with 7.8% of freshmen males from underrepresented minority groups. The political differences between genders were imperceptible among underrepresented minorities and less pronounced for Asian freshmen.

The liberal female-conservative male dynamic has not always existed at Berkeley. Back in 1972, male liberals outnumbered female liberals by 1.2%. But by 1990, significantly more women (9.8% more) held liberal political views than did men. (See Figure 2.)

Guns, gays, and stay-at-home moms
What does it mean to be liberal or conservative at Berkeley? Is it possible that “middle of the road” on this campus is still west of the rest of the country? Although the 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen provided no definition of “liberal” or “conservative” that students could use to classify their views, more insight can be gained by comparing their answers to a set of statements about social, moral, and political issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage with those of other U.S. freshmen.

Given that Berkeley freshmen are twice as likely to call themselves liberal, one would imagine a huge difference in attitudes on hot-button social issues. The gap is indeed there, but not as wide as might be expected.

Respondents were told to indicate whether they agreed strongly, agreed somewhat, disagreed somewhat, or disagreed strongly with statements. (For the convenience of this article, these four responses have been simplified into “agreed” or “disagreed.”) Berkeley freshmen formed a strong consensus on several topics:

• 88.3% of Berkeley freshmen agreed that “the federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns,” while 76.5% of U.S. freshmen thought so in 2003.
• 87.9% disagreed with the assumption that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America, compared with 77.6% nationally.
• 86.1% disagreed that “going to war in Iraq has made America a safer place” (not asked on the national survey).
• 86% disagreed that “the activities of married women are best confined to the home and family,” compared with 78.3% of all U.S. respondents.
• 78.7% agreed with the statement, “Abortion should be legal.” Nationally, only 54.5% of freshmen agreed.
• 76.7% agreed that “same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status,” while nationally only 59.4% concurred.
• 73.9% agreed that “the federal government’s war on terrorism has unnecessarily compromised our civil liberties in this country” (not asked on national survey).
• 70.2% disagreed that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers (not asked on national survey).
• 72.3% agreed with the statement, “Wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now.” Only 53.1% of all U.S. freshmen thought so.

Berkeley freshmen were more divided on the remainder of the questions.

• On the statement, “The death penalty should be abolished,” 50.6% agreed, and the remainder supported the status quo. Only 32.6% of U.S. freshmen polled in 2003 would have retired capital punishment.
• And “Sex and the City” notwithstanding, students today are divided over the morality of casual hookups. In response to the statement, “If two people really like each other, it’s all right for them to have sex even if they’ve known each other for only a very short time,” 53.1% of Berkeley freshmen said they agreed. (This question did not appear on the national survey.)
• 55% disagreed that “there is too much concern in the courts for the rights of criminals,” compared with 38.9% nationally.
  b While 55.8% of Berkeley freshmen disagreed that marijuana should be legalized, 23.7% strongly opposed legalization, compared with the 12.9% who would push for it. Nationally, 61.2% opposed legalization.
• 57.3% agreed that “affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished,” even more than thought so nationwide, where at a 52.8% agreement rate, the margin was slimmer.

Born again, born abroad
OSR’s 2004 Survey of Berkeley Freshmen measured a lot more than their political views.

It also paints a novel picture of the typical Berkeley freshman from a variety of perspectives. Out of 2,315 freshmen respondents, 266 said they considered themselves born-again Christians. On the other hand, close to half (43.8%) answered “none” when asked to state their religious preference on a different question. Nationally, only 17.6% of U.S. freshmen chose the same answer.

Demographically, first-generation Americans continue to make up the bulk of the student body. Although 74.8% of Berkeley freshmen were born in the United States, both parents of 58.1% were born outside the U.S.; an additional 8.4% had one parent born elsewhere. Nationally, only 13.4% of university freshmen had two foreign-born parents. The parents of 77.1% of Berkeley freshmen were both alive and living with each other, slightly more than the national average.

Berkeley freshmen hunger for advanced degrees: Only 15% intend to cease their education with a bachelor’s degree, 22.5% think they’ll stop after a master’s, while another 21.2% aim for a Ph.D.; the rest are looking at medical, business, and law postgraduate degrees.

Family planning
Asked to rate how important an array of different goals is to them personally, the biggest group of 2004 Berkeley freshmen chose “raising a family” as essential or very important — at 70.9%, just a few percentage points less than the 2003 national average, 74.8%. Other popular goals among all freshmen were “being very well off financially,” which 67.8% at Berkeley considered very important or essential and 73.8% of all freshmen did. A slightly bigger group (68.8%) considered “helping others who are in difficulty” essential or very important, compared with 63.7% nationally.

The topic that inspired the most anxiety was maintaining a high enough grade-point average — 68.8% admitted to being “very concerned” about this. Second was “being overwhelmed with all the things I’m expected to do my first semester,” which 38.1% said they were very worried about.

In contrast, 62.5% were “not that concerned” about getting along with their roommates — only 10.7% were “very concerned.” More than half of respondents, or 55.4%, felt they were adjusting to life at Berkeley just fine, thank you, and were not that concerned about homesickness or being away from family and friends.

UCLA was apparently Berkeley’s biggest rival for the freshmen who eventually enrolled here, with 26.7% indicating it had been their second- choice college. Asked “how difficult was it to choose Berkeley,” 42.5% answered “Not at all difficult,” while another 35.4% said the decision had been “somewhat difficult.”

Most telling, halfway through the semester, the majority of students felt they were fitting in just fine: 59.2% said they were not concerned whether Berkeley had been the right choice for them.