Stroll down the notoriously liberal Telegraph Avenue in UC Berkeley for a sea of political paraphernalia ““ T-shirts reading “Obonga” with an image of Barack Obama or illustrations of Sarah Palin over the text “Nope.”
A couple hours southeast at UC Merced, students representing College Republicans held a rally with the campaign slogan, “Come out of the closet, it’s okay to be a Republican,” to recruit conservative voters.
As north as UC Davis and as south as UC San Diego, many UC students have defied stereotypes of the apathetic youth vote ““ whether through political demonstrations or voter registration booths ““ and established a voice.
Nicole Milner, a fourth-year health science student at UC Santa Cruz said she lacks funds to buy textbooks and, as a result frequents the library to complete class readings. Brady Balolong, a first-year undeclared student at UC San Diego, said he cannot afford to live in the dorms and, as a result, commutes to school.
Whether the issue is the war in Iraq, or obtaining health care, the issues prevalent in the campaign are directly impacting students, probing them to increase political awareness and activism on the UC campuses. In the UC-wide initiative, “UC Students Vote! Project,” representatives from every UC campus mobilized unregistered voters to register to vote. At UCLA, the StudentsVOTE! coalition registered 8,519 new voters. With the other UCs, more than 40,000 UC students were registered.
Student groups were clustered next to the UC Santa Cruz bookstore. Among them were Students for Obama and others chanting, “No on Prop. 8,” to passersby. Victor Sanchez, a third-year sociology and Latin American and Latino studies student and external vice president of the Student Union Assembly at UC Santa Cruz, was encouraging people to register to vote.
He said that it is important for people to register to vote so they have a voice in the election.
“A lot of it has to do with framing it as a historical election, simply because the multitude and magnitude of what has been going on,” he said. “I say if you have questions about the economy, make sure your voice is heard,” he said.
Alvaro Bernal, UCSB ’08 alumnus in English and film studies, thinks the increase in political activism on campus is directly related to promoting a specific candidate rather than students advocating for certain issues and said he sees the hype dying down once the election is over.
Some students said that because they are busy with school and other activities, they don’t have enough time to focus on politics.
“I would rather let an educated person make the vote than an uneducated person make the vote, and if I am that uneducated person I think it’s also my duty just to step up and not vote,” said Adam Goldberg, a first-year undeclared student at UC Merced.
Since the candidates have leaked into American pop culture as pseudo celebrities ““ Sarah Palin made an appearance on Saturday Night Live and Barack Obama regularly shows up on Perez Hilton’s Web site – some students said others can be blind to the issues at hand and only participate in the campaign because it is trendy.
“I see people who don’t really know the issues … but just kind of do it because it’s a bandwagon thing. It’s different for me because me and my friends actually get together and watch the presidential debates,” said Victoria Jaramillo, a fourth-year anthropology student at UC Santa Barbara. “It can be superficial for people who don’t really get into it.”
The political atmosphere across the UC schools is overwhelmingly liberal, isolated from the ideologies of the demographic populating surrounding areas. While Merced and Davis tended to nurture more conservative ideologies, the campuses as a whole still veer toward democratic ideals.
Bert Lindercamp, a third-year bioengineering student at UC Santa Cruz, noticed that campuses tend to be isolated from the community.
“Santa Cruz is a bit of a bubble … you can’t learn without debating or having the opposite view being presented to you,” he said.
With reports by Alene Tchekmedyian, Theresa Avila, Will Weiss, JJ Yang, Kim Lajcik, Maya Sugarman and Derek Liu, Bruin senior staff.