I was pleasantly surprised Sunday morning to read a headline in The Washington Post describing many college students dissenting on the prospect of war with Iraq. With all the polls conducted by media outlets and organizations like Gallup, I assumed that a claim of “many” students would give me some hard numbers or at least a percentage to run with. However, the story, “Specter of War Stirs Campus Dissent” by Lee Hockstader did everything but give me a sense of how many the “many” college dissenters were. Rather, the article used quotes from undergraduates from schools around the country obtained in “scores” of interviews at 10 U.S. universities.

Statistically speaking, scores of interviews are a mere drop in the sample-size bucket. National polls routinely have samples of more than 1,000. More disturbing was the pool of universities used in the study. There were land-grant institutions – UC-Berkeley, Maryland and Texas A&M – and several private universities like Georgetown and Notre Dame. However, only one school was a private college, none were community colleges, and with the exception of Notre Dame, none of the schools were from the mountain states or Midwest.

Making a generalized statement about all those pursuing higher education in this country would be a daunting task, even with a large enough sample and a variety of schools to have covered the gamut from Bob Jones to Berkeley, the Dakota School of Mines to NYU, and Hawkeye Community College to Harvard.

I suppose if I were a right-wing hack I would spend the rest of this space condemning the study and deriding the researchers for seeking out anti-war sentiment at Catholic schools and places like Berkeley, but these claims are obvious and I am hard-pressed to believe that anyone would seriously challenge the position that the methods are sub-par and the findings inconsequential.

My thoughts turn instead to what I read, as the Daily’s opinion editor, from students who voluntarily choose to air their views in the Daily. I cannot pretend the following will be anything stronger than an anecdote about ISU students, but it is the only indicator I have.

First, if the volume of reader feedback on any topic is any indicator for the topic’s salience among students, concern with war on Iraq is far down the list.

An avalanche of letters will come in on matters of religious concern: groups proselytizing on campus, “under God” in the Pledge and evolution. However, the same conviction does not come through in droves when we discuss whether we are morally obligated to remove a dictator or whether we ought to be bombing other people.

Students seem to feel strongly about the legalization of marijuana. I get more responses to the proposed law in Nevada than I get on every other piece of legislation and all the upcoming elections and referendums combined.

Finally, the campus is truly galvanized by a big football game and an even bigger victory. Students write in to express their feelings about the team and the opposition, but letters about current events issues comprise a fraction of the mail I receive close to a big game.

Somewhere after religion, marijuana and football lies the matter of our administration’s response to the potential threat of war. Had the Washington Post conducted a more thorough study examining collegiate opinions, I wonder if the strength of the views expressed in the article would have been tempered by more immediate college concerns and other current issues.

One aspect of the Washington Post study was more representative of college students than the letters I receive at the Daily. Simply put, very few women on this campus engage in any debate in the Daily’s forum. The majority of letters sent in by women focus solely on campus issues – residential or parking concerns, local religious activities and the like – and the letters I have received from undergraduate or graduate women on national or international matters I could count on the fingers of one hand. I am more likely to receive feedback on these issues from people who graduated more than thirty years ago than from women currently enrolled.

I do not know why we fail to see discussion on the matter of war among a broader population of students, and I do not know what college students really think about Iraq. I do know, however, we will not find the answer in poorly crafted studies.

I only wish I knew why the reader opinions expressed in our university paper do not encompass a group more representative of the entire campus. It is an answer not so clear-cut as in a yes-or-no survey.

Rachel

Faber

Machacha

is a graduate student in international development studies. She is the opinion editor of the Daily.