An ignorance of national and world affairs runs wild among students on campus.
By Andrea Banda
Assistant Opinions Editor
The guard entrances in front of Pepperdine not only protect the campus, but perhaps also seem to shelter the students inside from the outer world, a non-scientific survey of current events conducted by the Graphic revealed.
In a random survey in the cafeteria last week, 42 of the 50 people surveyed did not know that Nov. 5 was the United States general election, and 14 out of the 50 did not know that Colin Powell is the U.S. Secretary of State.
In Dr. Mike Jordan’s reporting and editing class, a requirement for journalism majors, only four out of 17 people correctly labeled six or more of 11 Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Is the average Pepperdine student ignorant of current events?
“I feel that on the whole my undergraduate students are ignorant of world affairs,” Carl Flynn, visiting professor of religion, said. “Unless a student is required to read a daily newspaper, a textbook or something catastrophic takes place on the world scene, he or she simply doesn’t have a broad enough horizon available to include a substantive understanding of the contemporary world scene.”
Dr. Stanley Moore, professor of political science, said he has found that his students know very little about geography and current events. He requires that his students read The New York Times and gives them a quiz every two weeks.
“I am shocked at how little knowledge students have,” he said.
On the last quiz, Moore asked students what state U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm represents. He said he was surprised that only six out of the 58 students knew the answer was Texas.
“I give them questions I think they should know, but they surprise me by not knowing them,” he said.
Some professors, however, said they do not think that it is typical of only Pepperdine students.
“I don’t know if students at Pepperdine are any less knowledgeable about world affairs than the average college student,” Dr. Milt Shatzer, Communication Division chair and professor, said.
Shatzer said he composed a study to assess the exposure of news media to college students at the University of Kentucky in the 1980s.
“At that time we found that most UK students didn’t read major newspapers on a regular basis, didn’t watch major network news broadcasts and didn’t expose themselves to other major news outlets,” he said.
He said the study found that the only thing that students did do was to read the campus newspaper and listen to the five-minute news summaries on the radio.
“My hunch is that most college students still get their news from the campus newspaper, but also from ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,’ and entertainment shows like these,” he said. “Pepperdine students probably follow this pattern.”
Dr. Robert Lloyd, chair of the international studies and languages department, said that overall he thinks Pepperdine students are fairly well informed relative to undergraduates at many other universities.
“Over half of Seaver students will have had some type of International Programs experience,” he said. “It makes a difference in how they see the world.”
Melissa Potts, a junior who participated in the summer Spain and France programs, said that being overseas did increase her knowledge of world affairs.
“The programs definitely made me more aware,” she said. “I not only learned about the countries I was in, but others as well.”
In an effort to increase college awareness of current events on the Malibu campus, three years ago Pepperdine joined the USA Today Readership Program, which now consists of 200 campuses nationwide. This program brings USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times to residence halls and on-campus apartments. A total of 474 newspapers are delivered daily to Pepperdine.
According to Thai Trieu, regional marketing director for USA Today, 21.3 percent of Pepperdine students pick up at least one newspaper per day, in comparison to the 20 percent average for other West Coast schools. However, Trieu says that the average for East Coast schools is 35 percent. He also said that on average 74 papers are picked up unused each day of the total 474.
Last week in a random on-campus telephone survey of 100 people, 93 percent said that when they read the newspaper, they used those provided by the readership program.
However, the students surveyed read a newspaper an average of two times per week. Twenty-one percent said they never read a newspaper.
Thirty-three percent never watch the television news. The average number of times the students surveyed watch television is 2.24 times per week.
Ninety percent of students use the Internet as a source of news, on an average of 4.21 days per week.
“I don’t get to watch news or political commentary at all, let alone read newspapers because of my schedule,” junior Amy Barfoot said.
Extra-curricular activities and heavy class loads keep many students from regularly keeping up with current events.
“Now that I’m back on campus, I am so bogged down with schoolwork and extra-curricular activities that I don’t have time to keep up on events,” Potts said. “I only have time to read the headlines that jump out on Web sites.”
Although many Pepperdine students do not keep up on current events, telecommunication major Tara Lawrence said she makes time to read USA Today and The New York Times every day, as well as watch Fox News.
“It is important to keep up on current events to be responsible citizens who make informed decisions,” she said. “In America we tend to focus on ourselves, while other countries teach their students about everyone else. As a result, it seems they have a much better worldly foundation.”
Although many Pepperdine students do not consistently make an effort to keep up on current events and international news, Professor Flynn said he thinks that Pepperdine students do not blatantly ignore world affairs, but that the university does not foster the academic and social culture that allows students to rise above their immediate concerns for success.
“University students elect to check out of the broader engagement with the affairs of the world during their education simply because the resources of time to demonstrate real concern for world affairs is simply limited,” Flynn said.
November 14, 2002
