Fresno State not so liberal compared to other campuses

By REBECCA MARTIN

Before I came to Fresno, I had never heard of the F.F.A. or Tulare’s Farm Equipment Show.

For fellow Bay Area kids that don’t know, F.F.A. stands for Future Farmers of America, and Tulare’s Farm Equipment Show advertises itself as the “world’s largest showcase of farm products.”

Coming to college at Fresno State isn’t like moving to the moon, but there are definitely some things I learned when I came here. One of the more surprising things I learned is that some people call Fresno State a liberal campus.

I like to think of the term liberal as something or someone that leans to the left of the majority. And in that case, calling Fresno State liberal means at least 50 percent of other colleges have to be more conservative than us. OK. So where exactly are all those other campuses?

A couple of summers ago, I took a history class at a junior college about 30 minutes away from Berkeley. The teacher for the class didn’t believe in buying any clothing from a corporate store, meaning it became his prerogative to sew all his own clothing. In addition, he had a long scraggly ponytail that he wore under a bandana, and literally talked about how “the Man” brought about the Depression.

It’s not like students have never seen a teacher like that at Fresno State. I’m sure we all have had our own personal experiences. But someone like that in Fresno sticks out, whereas they’re the norm in a college somewhere else. We would notice and talk about someone like that, just like people at my junior college might talk about a farm equipment show in the next county over.

Fresno State tends to be a little more mainstream when it comes to being liberal. Here, liberal can be defined as a Democrat. Elsewhere, like my junior college, a liberal Democrat might be surprised by the views of another person labeled a liberal. It all depends on the context you’re in, and what other people’s beliefs are.

Fresno State, when compared to other schools, isn’t a liberal campus. Are there liberal people here? Of course. And some of them probably already knew what Tulare’s Farm Equipment Show is.

Some have probably even gone. But to say those people make Fresno State a liberal campus forgets all the other campuses out there that truly are liberal.