A couple of recent experiences made me consider how much weight a college's homogeneous nature should have in the college choice process. I've come to think that attending a college with political and/or religious leanings heavily skewed to one side of the bell curve is a serious problem.
As a life-long liberal, I've been completely uninterested in my offspring (who are also left-leaning politically) attending a college like Liberty or even ones like Calvin College or Hillsdale. I've come around to the thought that attending a college like Occidental also may be a poor decision.
Here's how I came to this conclusion.
First, Occidental. I had read about the recent Oxy sexual assault case and the apparent rush to judgement reportedly encouraged by the administration (don't care to make this thread a rehashing of this event). For those that have toured Oxy, you will know it makes a big deal about President Obama being a former student on two occasions (stopping to point out what is known as the Presidential Suite in one dorm and stopping for several minutes in front of an Obama display in the library). (BTW, I like Obama and would vote for him a third time if given a choice.) In addition, the student newspaper prints stories/editorials that nearly ubiquitously favor left-leaning ideas. In short, Oxy seems to be a nearly homogeneous pot of left-leaning groupthink.
The second experience I had was watching ESPN's recent 30-for-30 documentary on the Duke lacrosse rape scandal that occurred back in 2006/7. Highly recommend this film! It chronicles the cauldron of several stereotypes, groupthink, and rush to judgement that resulted in the wrongful indictment of a few players and disbarment of a rouge DA (among other things). It's the groupthink involving the media, student body, and criminal justice system that I found most repulsive. In this case, it's again left-leaning groupthink.
IMO, college ideally should be about engaging people with different views during the academic process. I don't think an environment like Liberty or Oxy is conducive to this academic process. In honing a college list for my Ds, I didn't give much weight to whether or not a college had a groupthink mentality, but I'm now reconsidering this approach.
Would like to hear other's thoughts.
↧