MATT BROWN: Abramoff who? A disappointing Brandeis survey
We at Brandeis have quite the reputation for political activism. But we do our predecessors a huge disservice by failing even to maintain political awareness.One of my responsibilities at the Justice is to come up with a question for "Brandeis Talks Back," or "B-talks." I then find four people to answer it. Last week, because of an article and editorial we were running, one of the photo editors suggested the question, "What do you think Jack Abramoff did?"
My initial reaction was that it was a poor choice of a B-talks question-obviously people would know about Abramoff '81. He's only behind one of the largest Congressional bribery scandals in years, and just a few weeks ago, he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. Printing four correct answers is neither funny nor interesting.
But I misjudged my peers. It took me longer than I thought it would to find four people willing to have their pictures and names printed next to a wrong answer. Had I found someone who knew the name, we would have printed it. But I had to go through a total of 10 people, because so many passed on answering. They felt embarrassed about looking uninformed.
I returned to the Justice office appalled at what I had encountered. How is it that at Brandeis, reputedly one of the most politically active-and by implication, aware-campuses in the nation, 10 randomly selected students had no idea about one of the biggest news stories of the last few months-especially one about our own alumnus?
I decided to find out if it was just poor luck. Surely it was just chance that the people I happened to ask didn't know who Abramoff was. Unfortunately, I am no pollster: I don't know statistical formulas, or any other polling strategies. All I had were my pen, a notepad and my wits.
This time, I decided to add an extra element. All four people in last week's B-talks remembered who Abramoff was-or at least, they claimed to-with some prompting; would that be the general case this time?
I conducted a highly informal survey of 125 people I saw in Usdan and the Goldfarb Library. I did not take down names, genders, class years or majors. I only asked them the very same question I used last week: "What do you think Jack Abramoff did?"
The result startled me, in two ways. The lingering optimism I had about our campus was again diminished after seeing how few people could instantly recall Abramoff's misdeeds. Fifty-three people had instant recall, and gave answers involving at least 2 of the following words: corrupt, lobbyist, Congress and Native Americans. The remaining 72 were just as clueless as the 10 I encountered previously. The percentages round to: 42 percent knowing and 58 percent unaware.
Yet there is some hope. Out of the 72 people who could not instantly identify Abramoff based on his name, 68 remembered (or again, claimed that they did) after being prompted by at least one of the following phrases: corrupt lobbyist or Native Americans. This means that 94 percent of the "unawares" could remember with prompting, or, in other words, only four out of 125 (3 percent) had absolutely no idea who Abramoff was.
Was the poll representative of the entire Brandeis student body? Possibly not. What would a representative poll find? I don't know, but I have a sinking feeling that the numbers would be similar. I recognize it depends on the people I asked; politics majors probably are more up-to-date with current events than theater majors are (not to knock on thespians).
Perhaps this is too idealistic-or snobbish-of me, but that I should find anyone not keeping up with current events is scary, especially at this university. I don't believe the so-called "Brandeis Bubble" exists outside of people's minds; I'm not restricted by Brandeis's boundaries, and there's no reason for you to be, either. If we are going to be the leaders of our generation, as we are told over and over again, we must pay attention to the goings-on of our current leaders, so that we never repeat their crimes and blunders.
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