By Rachel Tillison

Students balancing books on their laps and even more students sitting crouched together on the ground, everyone waiting anxiously to see the results. Even in the quiet study room below Thomas Great Hall, the dim roar of applause and screaming could be heard as the final results rolled in and Barack Obama was declared the next President of the United States.

While officially labeled a non-partisan event, the election returns party that took place last November was anything but non-partisan, despite Smart Women Vote’s attempts to be fair and make it that way. While it is widely held that Bryn Mawr is a liberal environment, that night stands as a clear reminder of the overwhelming sense of democratic power on campus that night.

Although it is unrealistic to say that everyone in Thomas that cheered wildly for Obama’s win was a Democrat, it does raise questions about the type of political climate we live in here at Bryn Mawr. Is it safe to say that Bryn Mawr as a whole is a liberal campus?

Junior Vanessa Stair  stated that Bryn Mawr is “almost liberal to a fault at times.” She added that there is often only one viewpoint and that the campus can be unapologetically liberal. 

"No one questions it," she said.

Junior Sophia Papavizas, Co-President of Smart Women Vote also agreed that Bryn Mawr leans liberal.

“But then again, the majority of northeast schools do,” she noted.

Concerning the election returns party last year, she said that Smart Women Vote only received “a 50/50 response of people feeling comfortable” about how non-partisan the event was. It was undetermined whether half of the people who attended the event felt uncomfortable because their candidate didn’t win, but it may indicate that there were conservative students in the audience who felt underrepresented at the party.

So where are the conservatives on campus?

Interestingly, many of the students interviewed that identified as Democrats said that they did have Republican friends.

In fact, Papavizas said, "Since I’ve been here, I’ve had more conservative friends than ever.”

She also added that she feels like her conservative friends have been more polarized in their political beliefs since coming to Bryn Mawr because of how they have had to relate to the liberal environment around them.

Junior Laurel Lemon, one of Papavizas’s Republican friends, related her experiences as a conservative in a liberal environment.

“One of the problems is that Bryn Mawr is about diversity," she said, "every diversity but political. You’re not ostracized but you’re also alienated in a way. There’s no dialogue.”

Lemon also included that she and a few of her conservative friends used to get together for dinner to talk politics and current events, but this isn’t the case anymore.

“We were a club,” she said, rolling her eyes and emphasizing the word “were." Lemon hinted at the difficulties of sustaining a Republican or conservative club.

However, opinion does vary about how comfortable conservative students feel on our generally liberal campus.

“I think that the majority of students are liberal,” says self-identified conservative Jessica Watkins ’13. “But I think that it’s also balanced. It’s a relaxed environment to exercise your ideas.”

Seniors Molly Parzen and Lauren Black, both executive members of the Bryn Mawr Democrats, agreed that the majority of the campus is liberal. What did they have to say about Bryn Mawr’s Republicans?

“They knew coming in that they were going to be the minority.”

However, they added that the strong number of Democrats on campus has not increased the number of students who join the Bryn Mawr Democrats or show up to meetings.

“I feel like Bryn Mawr talks a big game when it comes to being informed,” Parzen said, referring to student political participation on campus. Parzen, who worked for Congressman Joe Sestak’s campaign this past summer, said that she was constantly amazed by how difficult it was to get students involved in voting.

“You literally have to go out of your way to get people involved by bribing them with free transportation, food, anything,” she said.

It was the consensus of both Parzen and Black that though the majority of students on campus may call themselves liberal, it has not changed how students react to voting opportunities, or interest in attending talks given by political speakers on campus.

However, this lack of interest in local politics is arguably true of most people in the United States, students or not. There are a million other things people think about daily that take precedence over who’s running for local office.

While consensus may be that Bryn Mawr is a liberal campus, students also agreed that it takes a certain type of person to live in a political environment like Bryn Mawr.

As Parzen said in her description of the general political atmosphere on campus, “There’s a Bryn Mawr type and that can certainly include Democrats and Republicans but regardless, you are still that type.”

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