Democrats' star is rising, even at Biola
Throughout its history, the university has been a bastion of Republican support. But this year, for the first time, there's a College Democrats club and other signs of change emerging on campus.
The campus banquet room is reserved, the gelato ices are on tap and the students are hoping for red, white and blue balloons over the archway.
But for the first time in years, the Republican club at Biola University, a conservative evangelical Christian college, doesn't know whether its election party will be a celebration or a wake.
"It would be really great if McCain pulls it out, but if not, our party is going to be over by 8:15 p.m.," club president John Sirjord, 19, said at the GOP group's ice cream social last week.
Biola University has long been a Republican citadel, helping its La Mirada precinct deliver 93% of the vote in each of the last two elections to George W. Bush, the president's best showing in any Los Angeles County polling area that cast more than 20 ballots. But change has come this year to the 95-acre campus on the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties, and not without turmoil.
For the first time in memory, a Biola College Democrats club has formed, marking campus walls with slogans such as "You are the change you hope for" and "If you want peace in the Middle East, you're a Democrat." After GOP groups protested that the content was "offensive," the posters came down. Joint debate-watching parties with the Republicans were nixed after some political invective was aimed at Democrats at an early gathering.
"For some reason, here on campus they think you can't be a Christian and a Democrat," said Biola Democrats president Athena Fleming, 24. "We have to act with the utmost diplomacy."
This year's presidential race has been generally polarizing. But political friction on the Biola campus reflects a deeper tension as the onetime Bible school feels its way to the modern ideals of pluralism, while striving to preserve its conservative core values.
Biola today is an accredited university offering advanced degrees and preparing 5,900 students from across the nation for a wide array of secular occupations, from business to archaeology. Minority students now make up 39% of the school's undergraduate student body of 4,800, and President Barry H. Corey has made social justice and diversity centerpieces of his administration. Students from "mono-cultures" of suburban or rural Christian high schools or home-schooling are encouraged to take an "urban plunge" to study inner-city churches and schools.
