Elyse Ashburn had a very interesting piece this morning in The Chronicle on a recent poll on the political attitudes of college students. She seemed disappointed that “Most of those students weren’t out knocking on doors or persuading family and friends to vote for their candidate. And they appeared to actually be paying less attention to the election than the average American does.” She also lamented that “only one in three of the students had displayed a campaign sign or tried to recruit a friend or family member to a particular campaign.” But, at the same time, the poll showed that “the vast majority of students said they definitely planned to vote.”

I wonder if we should be worried by this apparent lack of activism? It stems, I would think, from the students’ residence away from home. They would be spending more time trying to convince their parents and neighbors if they were still living at home, whereas on campus their “neighbors” are fellow students. Likewise, many (most?) students are voting in the districts in which they are students, rather than in the districts in which their parents reside, and they probably feel less connected to “local” politics near their universities than near their family homes. Still, it would be better if students were more fully engaged in the political process. I would like to think that part of their disengagement was due to their preoccupation with coursework on campus, but I was not born yesterday, and I doubt that is the explanation — many active voters have day jobs, after all.

My totally unsystematic take on my own students is that a relatively small proportion of them are political activists. Princeton has a tradition, born in the days of the Vietnam War, of scheduling a “Fall Break” so that students can go home (or elsewhere) to campaign for candidates. We have been under some pressure to eliminate the break on the grounds that few students use it for political action. But this year I know that several of my students are traveling to contested districts (not their home districts) to campaign, though I am sure that they are a minority. I talk a lot about politics in my classes (and make clear where I stand), but I don’t find much inclination for students to push back politically in class. I don’t find that surprising, and I do not assume that means that the students are not committed. The only thing I ask of them is that they vote if they are old enough, and on this point the CHE poll is encouraging.

I was also fascinated to note that just 17 percent of the students polled “thought racism was a very serious problem, and only 16 percent though sexism was.” Not very surprisingly, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians thought racism was still a problem, as did (less than a quarter of) women. Could it be that we are on the brink of a postracial and postsexist generation? It would be nice to think so, though I suspect that the message is not that students do not think racism and sexism social issues – but that they do not think they are especially political issues.

The bottom line in the poll, so far as I am concerned, is that students “believe their votes could matter. More than four of five said the outcome of the presidential election will make a real difference.” This is the attitude that counts, for democracy depends upon the electorate thinking it has a genuine stake in the outcome of elections. If our students have come around to thinking that voting matters, it is an occasion for dancing in the streets.

(Image incorporates photos from Flickr users Chaparral, freeparking, and masonvotes.)