The Political Socialization of College Students: Student Government, Diversity, and Political Power
Elizabeth S. Smith, Sabrina S. Roof, Katherine West and Nicole Hyman
Furman University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Cincinnati, University of Connecticut1
PCS – Politics, Culture and Socialization, Issue 2021-2022, pp. 9-33
Abstract: For over a century, institutions of higher education have had student government organizations on their campuses. We show these organizations serve as important socializing agents, providing opportunities to practice politics and exercise political voice. In this article, we present both quantitative and qualitative research conducted over the past two years on the top 50 universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges. We investigate the role of these organizations on their campuses, the level of their diversity in leadership, and the correlates of that diversity (type of school, geography, politics of the state legislature, etc.). Using surveys and in-depth interviews of student leaders, we find that student governments are influenced in many ways by the current politics of the day especially surrounding issues of diversity and inclusion, and that leadership opportunities socialize students to have the skills for and interest in future political officeholding.
Keywords: political socialization, college student government, student leadership
Introduction
“How dare you claim to care about this university but lie and cheat to get into a position of leadership?” (Vasquez, 2018, pg. 3) – A student at Texas State University to the student-body president (who later resigned) accused of taking illegal campaign donations from Turning Point USA, a 501c(3) founded in 2012 to promote, “conservative grassroots activist networks on college campuses across the country” (Turning Point USA, 2019).
“Hi Clemson fans. It’s Ivanka Trump. I am so proud of what each and every one of you are doing. Don’t forget to reach for new heights by voting for Huskey-Haley”– Ivanka Trump in a video on her webpage for students. Rena Haley is the daughter of Nikki Haley (former S.C. Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) and was running for Clemson
“Brooks [an openly gay Texas A&M student] did not win the election. He finished second by more than 750 votes to one Mr. Robert McIntosh. However, McIntosh was disqualified by the SGA [Student Government Association] Election Commission and Judicial Court through a process that – at best – made a mockery of due process and transparency. At worst, the SGA allowed an election to be stolen outright.” – U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle (March 22, 2017).
In the 2012 report, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, scholars note the increasing threat of civic disengagement, low political trust, incivility, and hyper-partisanship to our democracy (The National Task Force, 2012). The report highlights the need for institutions of higher education to provide young people the foundational knowledge and skills needed to support and maintain a thriving democracy: “As a democracy, the United States depends on a knowledgeable, public-spirited, and engaged population. Education plays a fundamental role in building civic vitality, and in the twenty-first century, higher education has a distinctive role to play in the renewal of U.S. democracy” (pg. 2). An increasingly diverse population and a more globally intertwined world pose challenges to democratic nations. In order to be prepared for democratic citizenship, students must learn skills such as how to navigate different cultural values, how to engage with people of diverse opinions, and how to solve complex problems while at the same time understanding and respecting their own and others’ rights and obligations.
One of the most effective ways for students to be socialized into democratic norms is by providing them the opportunity to actively engage with others and with politics. As the Crucible Moment report states, “full civic literacies cannot be garnered only by studying books; democratic knowledge and capabilities also are honed through hands-on, face-to-face, active engagement in the midst of differing perspectives about how to address common problems that affect the well-being of the nation and the world” (pg. 3). We propose that college student government associations (SGAs) are important socializing agents because they give students the opportunity on college campuses to practice self-government. Like the democratic institutions of the U.S. government, college student governments provide students a variety of opportunities to practice politics including: running for or holding public office, writing and getting support for legislation, lobbying on behalf of one’s interests, managing and distributing scarce resources, working on political campaigns, learning about political candidates, voting in student elections and, especially, learning to communicate and work with diverse individuals. SGAs at institutions of higher education are important potential mechanisms for providing students with what Dewey would call “learning by doing” (Dewey, 1916). Student governments in their structure and design theoretically mirror the real political world college students are beginning to enter. Student governments can give students practice in the art of governing and being governed. As Bok (2017) recently argues, “student government offers valuable opportunities for students to learn the skills of politics and community leadership.” Ideally, students would learn through these student organizations what democracy in a diverse society entails.
Much like high school students, most university students are generally given limited say over the structure and decisions made at universities. The institutions themselves, for example, with their Boards of Trustees and what some have called their “imperial faculty,” fail to model democratic processes in their own structure and organization (Lagemann and Lewis, 2012). Prominent thinkers like Horace Mann (1855) and John Dewey (1916) among others have argued that schools should model democratic practices at best and at the least provide students the opportunities to exercise the skills of citizenship to prepare them for the life of a democracy. But, do college student governments provide an access point for influence and participation in decision- making in college? Who gets these opportunities and to what effect? How does the type of institution (university or liberal arts) and its context (political geography, religious affiliation) affect access to leadership positions among diverse students?
Relatively little research has been done on the role and power of college student governments; however, the few studies that have been done provide some important insight. A handful of studies (mostly over two decades old) show that student governments’ effects on the participating students include improved communication and cooperative skills as well as greater likelihood of staying in school (Kuh and Lund, 1994; Bambenek and Sifton, 2003; Stoecker, Pascarella, and Wolfe, 1988 as cited by Bray, 2006). Any potential effects of student government participation on students, however, depends in part on who participates. National data finds that student organizational leadership overall is predominantly female (61.6%) and predominantly white (Strachan and Bennion, 2017). These statistics generally reflect the proportion of female and white students on campuses. Prior research finds, however, that minority students and women are less likely to lead or participate in college student government (Lavant and Terrell, 1994 as cited by Bray, 2006; Miller and Kraus, 2004). These findings mirror leadership diversity in the real political world. Throughout U.S. history, women and people of color have faced significant barriers to politics and office-holding. While the 117th U.S. Congress is the most diverse in U.S. history, women still only constitute 27% and racial and ethnic minorities just 21% of Congress even though they make up 51% and 39% of the U.S. population respectively (Giba, 2020). Lawless and Fox (2013) find that participation in student government is importantly related to future political plans: “respondents who ran for student government during college were seven times more likely than their peers who had not run to articulate plans for a political career” (p. 9). Greater diversity in college student government provides one path toward greater diversity among office holders in the real political world.
The effect of student government on the future political activities of citizens generally is evidenced by past research, and notable examples like Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton, both of whom served as their college student body presidents. Student government is one potential socializing agent preparing students for a life in politics. However, we need to get a better sense of who is leading and who is participating and what they are doing. Clearly, as demonstrated by the quotes which began this paper, real-world politicians and political organizations are interested in college student governments in part because of their importance in cultivating future leaders. Political groups like Turning Point USA are recruiting and supporting conservative college students to participate in college student government to prepare them for political activism as adults. Are SGAs providing opportunities to only certain kinds of students, perpetuating the lack of diversity among future political candidates, or are they ushering in a new, more diverse political leadership? Do opportunities vary depending on the type of institution or the political culture in which a school is situated? In addition to who is leading, we ask in this paper, on what issues are they leading and to what effect? Do student governments provide students only the opportunity to engage campus issues or are they also socialized to engage with issues central to real world politics?
We will answer these questions using data collected on the top 50 ranked universities and liberal arts colleges (as measured by the 2017 and 2018 U.S. News and World Report). We present data on leadership of student government (president(s) and vice-president(s)) for the school years of 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. We are especially interested in tracking the gender and racial diversity of the leadership and the correlates of that gender and racial diversity – data that no one else is collecting (see Method section discussion below). We will then present results of a survey distributed to the presidents and vice-presidents of the student governments which provides further information regarding SGA’s socializing role: we measure in their institutions, measures of power and influence, student body involvement and perceptions, and their goals and obstacles (see Appendix B). Finally, we present qualitative data collected from phone interviews with SGA leaders which allows us to learn more particularly about the socializing role of their participation as student leaders (see Appendix C).
Methodology
Unfortunately, no one seems to be collecting basic but important descriptive data about student government leadership and participation over time. Our sample of college student governments includes the top 50 universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in 2018 and 2019 (the school years of 2017 and 2018, respectively) (see Appendix A).2 These elite schools were chosen in part because of their history in educating some of the most powerful political leaders in the United States. In fact, of the U.S. presidents who attended at least some college (thirty-three U.S. presidents), thirty-two (97%) of them attended for at least some period of time an institution included in our analysis (see Appendix A). Attendance at one of these schools can be an important pipeline into politics. Because college rankings change from year to year, our sample in 2017 had an original sample size of 101 and in 2018 a sample size of 105 (we kept the schools which were in our original list so that we can develop consistent comparative data overtime and added those which moved into the top 50 in 2018).
We were interested first in collecting descriptive data about the gender and race of SGA presidents and vice-presidents. We emailed the SGA presidents and vice-presidents at the 101 and 105 institutions of interest requesting their participation in a survey (email invitation sent in October of 2017 and June of 2018 with three reminders thereafter). Our response rate was 26 percent (n = 26 schools out of 101) in 2017 and 55 percent (n = 58 schools out of 105) in 2018. Response rates were higher for universities than for liberal arts SGAs each year. In 2017, response rates were 32 percent for universities (n = 16) and 20 percent for liberal arts (n = 10); in 2018, response rates were 68 percent for universities (n = 36) and 43 percent for liberal arts schools (n = 22).
Given the difficulty of low survey response rates, we used the guidelines issued by the American Association of Public Opinion Research which suggest “augmenting data” collected by surveys with additional non-survey measures of data collection (AAPOR, 2019). Our goal was to supplement the limited data we were able to collect from the surveys, so we scoured college student government websites and any potential school and national newspapers covering student government elections for the gender and race of the presidents and vice-presidents. This data was collected primarily between May of 2017 and October of 2017 the first year of the study and from May of 2018 to October of 2018 the second year. The range of time was in part due to the varying dates across schools for when they hold student government elections. We used pictures, self-references or bios on webpages, and news article references to ascertain the gender and ethnicity of the leadership.
We then compiled other institutional and regional data from each of the schools to evaluate factors related to the gender and race of the student government leadership. We were able to include a number of descriptive variables regarding each institution including: size of school, type of school, geographic location, religious affiliation, and percent of state legislature Republican to help us understand how context affects access to this socializing agent.
In addition to gender and race data, our survey of student government leaders at these top 50 universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges in 2017 (n = 26) and 2018 (n = 58) provided information we could not collect elsewhere. We were able to measure voter turnout in elections, student perspective on their student government’s effectiveness, whether the student government takes political stances, and why or why not.
Finally, we conducted qualitative interviews with leaders at the schools that participated in the survey (n = 84) to further complement our existing data. Of those contacted in 2017, five responded (a 20 percent response rate), and in 2018, eleven responded (a 19 percent response rate). Overall, of the 16 interviews conducted (ranging in time from 15-30 minutes), eight small liberal arts colleges and eight universities were represented in our interviews as were eight female leaders and eight male leaders. They were asked questions regarding their political ambitions, goals and accomplishments during their terms, and the atmosphere surrounding student government on their campus.
1 Email of corresponding author: liz.smith@furman.edu
2 We omitted military academies which as far as we could tell did not have student governments (U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Naval Academy); we also omitted single sex schools since one of our primary interests was in gender issues regarding leadership (Smith College, Wellesley College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Scripps College, Barnard College). This meant that we went to rank 46 for universities (it is not uncommon for schools to tie at a certain rank) and to rank of 58 for liberal arts colleges in order to have a sample of 50 from each category. St. Thomas Aquinas College entered the top 50 for liberal arts schools in 2018 but does not appear to have a student government, so they are not included in any of the analyses.
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