UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday. February 10, 1997
5A
Presidential elections don't revitalize interest
By Ann Marchand Kansan staff writer
Political activism among college students remained low during the presidential election year, according to a survey released last month.
The survey, which was conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, questioned more than 250,000 entering college freshmen last fall.
"The 1996 presidential elections did little to rekindle college students' interest in politics," said Linda Sax, associate director of the survey.
According to the survey results, those who consider political awareness a very important or essential life goal rose slightly in 1996 to 29.4 percent or a 9 percent increase from 1995. But in the 1992 presidential election year, 38.8 percent held that view, and 57.8 percent highly valued political awareness in 1966, the all-time high.
Allan Cigler, professor of political science, said that the attitudes this generation were raised with contributed to a general dislike and distrust of government.
"This generation was raised with a dominant view that government was the problem," he said.
Chris Gentry, Alma junior and KU Democrats treasurer, said that students still cared about political issues, but they didn't rally around them as they did in the 1960s.
That attitude is reflected in voting statistics as well. According to the Federal Election Commission, in 1996 only 64.82 percent of registered voters actually voted. That figure is the lowest since 1960, when the FEC first started calculating turnout.
"I think people still care a lot, but I think there's a lot less taking it out on the streets," he said. "I think that it's harder now for people to get involved, to find something that they want to get involved with, whereas in the 1960s you could pretty much find anything."
Samantha Bowman, Wichita junior and former chair of College Republicans, said that politics and government simply were not priorities for most students.
"People tend to get wrapped up in their own lives," she said. "The campus as a whole doesn't seem really active. I think people are aware but not pro-active. There's an unfortunately high amount of apathy."
"We know there's a relationship of how salent politics is to their lives and how efficacious they feel," he said. "People who are students are less active than they're going to be, and are among the least active in society in terms of partisan politics."
Cigler said that because students were not closely associated with government, they chose to spend their time on other activities.
However, he said that students were finding other routes of activism in society, such as community service.
"There's a lot of volunteer activity that never used to be there," he said.
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