The Left Loses College Kids (LAT)

[NNguyenMD]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-an...

The Left Loses College Kids

By Brian C. Anderson

Throughout 2003 and into 2004, a surge of protests roiled American campuses. You probably think the kids were agitating against war in Iraq, right? Well, no.

Students at UCLA, Michigan and many other schools were sponsoring bake sales to protest … affirmative action.

The protests shocked the mainstream press, but to close observers of the American college scene, they came as no surprise. For decades, conservative critics have bemoaned academe's monolithically liberal culture. But the left's long dominion over the university — the last place on Earth that the left's power would break up, conservatives believed — is showing its first signs of weakening.

The change isn't coming from the faculty lounges and administrative offices but from self- organizing right-of-center students themselves. Never has the right flourished among college kids as it does today. The number of College Republicans, for instance, has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats' 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members).

[w4rma]

1. Editorials belong in the editorial forum. (nt)

[NNguyenMD]

3. sorry, I'll be more careful next time

[Downtown Hound]

2. Wishful thinking on the right's part

These "protests" against affirmative action are the work of a very few. I can tell from experience going to college in the days leading up to the Iraq War that far more students went to anti-war rallies than these jerk off conservative events.

[NNguyenMD]

4. they learned from their Uncle O'lielly and Auntie Coulter that

provoking the otherside with incendiary comments and racism (under the guise of inequity) makes much more noise and draws much more attention than an actual demonstration.

[lastknowngood]

5. F*ck them then. They'll wake up when they start being forced to

die for the BFEE

[papau]

6. This planted BS by RW Regnery Publishing hacks is already a DU thread

but what the heck -

It never hurts to repeat!

Indeed when I posted it I did not catch the RW Regnery Publishing sourcing - so this gives me a chance to make amends!

[roguevalley]

7. they are vocal and organizing but liberal and progressive kids

don't always belong to things. I think the spread will always be against them because education makes you liberal, not conservative. They can talk all they want but they won't outnumber the progressives.

[aquart]

8. That's fine, dear. The army needs them.

They're enlisting upon graduation, right?

[BrklynLiberal]

9. DRAFT YOUNG REPUBLICANS.. my latest bumper sticker!!

[aquart]

11. Have they vandalized your car, yet?

[Fovea]

10. *brrrrrrrrr*

I mean, *brrrrrrrrr*.
Must be a volunteer rate enhancement
methodology in the room.