Conservative College Students: Are They The Silent Majority?

In journalism, sometimes the things left unsaid and/or unseen are important as the things that are said/seen. I noticed this was the case with Wittenberg students and their political opinions.

As we talked about in class, many students could not necessarily pinpoint why they felt an aversion to politics; they just knew there was that aversion. Perhaps students just don't like being it shoved in their face and/or they feel they genuinely can't identify with either party.

Moreover, I want to investigate and see if there is perhaps a right or center-right silent majority on campus.

As Champ brought up in his blog, where are the Romney and Ryan supporters? Perhaps they're there but they aren't making themselves visible. A couple weeks ago, at the Student Activities Fair on campus, the College Democrats were making themselves both seen and heard - very much so. Absent were the College Republicans. This begs the question: is this organization even still on campus?

The stereotype is that many college students are liberal and that the faculty is as well. Do students feel pressured to have liberal views because of this stereotype and are afraid to go against status quo?

Like I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the economy was not brought up among Witt students. This is the number one issue on most Americans' minds. I, for instance, think this is THE most important issue in the election and think that the Republicans have some good things to say in regards to the deficit. But if I admit this I can be accused by fellow students as being "heartless" simply because a few of my Republican views.

I grew up in a household that valued hard work ethic and I'm not ashamed to say my parents raised me with predominantly Republican values. I don't think I'd be where I am today without that upbringing so I can't say I think the Republican party is completely off-kilter. Then I ask myself: why are students ashamed to admit that they are right-leaning? Conversely, I was raised on some Democrat values as well and don't consider myself close-minded when it comes to politics. Throughout college, I started to shape opinions on my own accord and observations/inferences.

This is a very interesting topic to me and I'd like it to be my semester-long story. I hope to create a survey using survey monkey to ask students about their own political views as well as their perceptions on Wittenberg's student body and faculty's political inclinations.
Dr. James Allan, Comparative Politics professor, once gave my Methods class a survey rating our political views. As it turned out, our class was mostly center-right which was a shock to us but not to him. I'd like to interview him and perhaps get him to do this for me in some of his classes this year.

I hope my readers find this as interesting as I do, and I that's saying something since I know there's generally already an aversion to this topic. I think this is a challenge for me as well as my audience; it's bringing forth issues that normally we as students don't necessarily like to talk about.