Playboy's Student Survey

An image of The Seventies Student as a freaky radical haunts the American mind: His hair is down to his shoulders and there's a psychedelic gleam in his eye as he tosses a tear-gas canister back at a thick olive line of Guardsmen protecting the R. O. T. C. building. After the confrontation, he splits for an apartment where he spouts Ché and Mao, smokes dope and then tears off his clothes and leaps into a tangled erotic pile. Later, he wearily plans the revolution--to overthrow mom, the flag, Agnew and apple pie--while the Jefferson Airplane sings "Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker!"

That's the stereotype, anyway.

It came about from watching hours of bloody clashes between students and cops/Guardsmen/hard-hats on the evening news; from hearing national leaders denounce student dissenters as "bums," "agitators" and "dupes of Hanoi"; from overkill coverage of sex scenes such as the free-love-in-the-mud trip at Woodstock; from local reports of drug busts on nearly every campus in the country; from the confident prophecies by radical leaders that the revolution is about to get it on. Of such stuff is the image created. But is it accurate? Are the majority of students at the barricades, either physically or ideologically?

To find out, Playboy conducted one of the largest student opinion polls ever taken--a survey of attitudes on major issues on nearly 200 campuses across the country. The results--compiled from the responses of 7300 students--indicate that those on the ramparts stand a much lonelier vigil than one is led to expect. The majority of students may not be silent, but they have yet to stampede the nearest Weatherman recruiting table.

To begin with, students were given a list of 11 issues and asked to pick the one they felt was most serious. Here are the priorities they set.

Single Most Important Issue

The war in Indochina .......... 39%

Racial conflict .......... 15%

The environment .......... 15%

Government repression .......... 7%

Overpopulation .......... 7%

The economy .......... 6%

Crime .......... 3%

Drugs .......... 3%

Student rights .......... 2%

Nuclear disarmament .......... 2%

Women's rights .......... 1%

It's no surprise that most students choose the war as America's most pressing concern. What seems most significant is the fact that more than 60 percent of the students feel that something other than the war is most troublesome. From this, it appears that student political activity is not, as many have called it, a single-issue protest but, rather, a reflection of a deep and wide-ranging concern for America's problems that is not likely to wane when the war ends.

The War: Among the issues covered, a majority take a seemingly radical stand on only one: Vietnam. (The students were given four possible positions on the war; the numbers indicate the percentage of students who chose that statement as the one closest to their own position.)

The War--Solutions

Should pull out now .......... 36%

Should speed up withdrawal .......... 29%

Should follow the Administration's timetable for honorable withdrawal .......... 26%

Should fight for total victory, no matter what .......... 9%

These figures clearly reflect a widespread antagonism to the war. Nearly two thirds (65 percent) of students polled believe that the Nixon Administration should quickly withdraw all U. S. troops; and more than a third (36 percent) feel that the war should be ended immediately. The depth of anti-war sentiment has shown itself repeatedly in the form of demonstrations, marches and the strikes that followed the move into Cambodia. The discontent is not equally distributed among all types of students. We analyzed four important variables: sex, age, religion and family income--each of which might influence a student's position on the war--and found that his religious affiliation, or lack of it, most affects his position on the war. The following table breaks down by religion those who want to pull out of Vietnam now.

Pull Out Now--by Religion

Protestant .......... 27%

Catholic .......... 30%

Jewish .......... 51%

Other .......... 40%

None .......... 63%

Protestants show the least support for the radical choice. A further analysis (not shown on the table) demonstrates that anti-war feeling on campus is so strong that even among the Protestants, who are usually thought of as the backbone of Nixon's silent majority, more than half (56 percent) want the war brought to a speedy close; only a modest 32 percent support the Administration's program in Vietnam. At the other end of the spectrum are those students claiming no affiliation with organized religion; this group leans farthest to the left on almost all issues.

Student Unrest: Because of the thoroughgoing--and extremely visible--campus distaste for the war, many observers have expressed fears that the U. S. has bred a generation out of control and committed to tearing down the system. But the response to a question on campus unrest suggests a far less Draconian outlook.

Campus Turmoil

Most students are satisfied with conditions on campus; trouble is being fomented by agitators .......... 18%

Students are concerned, but dialog, not demonstrations, is the answer .......... 33%

Dialog has broken down; we need vigorous peaceful protest .......... 42%

University is part of a corrupt system; we must tear it all down .......... 7%

The overwhelming majority of students (82 percent) believe there are serious deficiencies in the educational system that urgently require reform. The most striking figure on this table may well be the tiny percentage (seven percent) opting for the revolutionary alternative. Three quarters of the students expressed a desire to find solutions to campus problems through legitimate methods of dissent, either dialog or peaceful protest.

Answers to two related questions further establish the predominantly liberal-moderate character of student political opinion. In the area of Government reform, responses are remarkably similar to those on campus unrest:

U. S. System of Government

U. S. system is fine as is .......... 12%

The system isn't perfect, but working within it is the most effective way to change it .......... 73%

The system needs complete overhaul; violent revolution is the only way .......... 15%

After what most students saw as the nightmare of the 1968 Democratic Convention--both in the Chicago Amphitheater and on the streets--there was fearful speculation that students had become disillusioned about the fairness and legitimacy of the democratic system in practice. Many commentators even predicted that this disaffection might well lead to violent revolution. According to our results, no such development has occurred. The disillusion is real enough, as the general results of the poll reflect. However, nearly three quarters (73 percent) believe that although the system is flawed, its evils and inequities can be remedied by constructive work from within--not through wholesale destruction from without. There is, in fact, a pronounced bias against violence as a political tactic.

At Kent State last spring, and a week later at Jackson State, the disastrous potential of campus disruptions became real. We asked the students where the blame for the four Kent State deaths should be placed.

Kent State Killings

Were the inevitable result of violent demonstrations; fault lies mainly with students .......... 19%

Were an unfortunate accident; no one's fault .......... 38%

Were attributable to the Nixon Administration's hostile attitude toward dissent .......... 43%

On this question, students were responding to an issue that was vivid to them (the poll was taken two weeks after the incident). Their response was angry: A plurality (43 percent) laid the blame for the killings on the Nixon Administration's hostility toward student dissent; 38 percent thought the killings were an accident; while only 19 percent blamed the violent character of the demonstration and the students who led it.

What is particularly interesting here is that the Administration seems to have succeeded, by a series of speeches and comments berating campus demonstrators, in pushing students to a position far left of the one they would otherwise have held. This is indicated by the response to a question about violent demonstrations in general.

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Violent Demonstrations

Violence is unjustifiable under any circumstances .......... 53%

Violence is justified only when provoked by authorities .......... 33%

Violence is the only way to make the establishment respond .......... 14%

Student Survey(continued from page 184)

Though a disturbingly high total of 47 percent of the students polled condoned the use of violence under certain circumstances, a majority (53 percent) declared they are against violence as a tactic, under any circumstances--a clear repudiation of the claims of SDS and other far-left groups. So it appears that the widespread demonstrations and strikes (the most massive in U. S. history) following Kent State did not represent an affirmation of radical philosophy but were, rather, an extraordinarily broad-based condemnation of Administration attitudes and repression that had resulted in the wanton slaying of four students.

What emerges from the pattern of answers so far is a picture of a student body that is basically liberal but not radical. If this is the case, then the overwhelming antagonism to the Vietnam war must be reinterpreted. In the context of a prevailing liberal student perspective, the fact that a plurality (36 percent) chose the extreme option--to pull out now--indicates that distaste for the war runs so deep that in a very certain sense, immediate withdrawal has become a liberal, not a radical, solution to ending our involvement in Indochina. This is especially apparent when one remembers that five years ago, this position was virtually a monopoly of the hard-line SDS elite who now openly express a desire for a Viet Cong victory.

Drugs: Ten years ago, the only drugs commonly used by college students were alcohol, aspirin and NoDoz. A little "tea" was smoked by hipsters in New York and California, but between those frontiers, getting bombed on booze was the headiest habit around.

Things are more complicated now: pot, peyote, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, STP, amyl nitrite, LSD, THC, hog, coke, belladonna, angel dust, heroin, Benzedrine, codeine, Methedrine, hash, opium, MDA, nutmeg, morphine, Librium, nitrous oxide, Valium, morning-glory seeds, Darvon--plus alcohol, aspirin and NoDoz.

The drugs are abundant and available; and the soaring number of campus busts indicates that students are, indeed, using them. In some eyes, youthful drug abuse amounts to a national crisis. As a good indicator of community concern, one has only to look to the anti-drug ads that have begun to appear on television; such warnings were nonexistent a couple of years ago. To find out if the fears behind such ads are justified, we asked students about their drug-taking habits.

As it turns out, Students seem to have a healthy awareness of those drugs that can put them on long-term bummers. They apparently believe that speed kills, barbiturates can bring you down for good and acid may eat permanent holes in your chromosomes. The habitual use of hard drugs--heroin, cocaine, etc.--on campus is nearly nonexistent (one percent reporting frequent use). In general, drug use (we'll consider pot separately and in detail later on) is not as widespread as might be expected--or feared. This is particularly true of LSD. The fact that nearly 90 percent of all students have never tried it and that only one percent can claim the dubious distinction of being confirmed acid users certainly belies the tremendous cultural impact of the drug. The word psychedelic became one of the vogue terms in the American vocabulary during the late Sixties; but our national fascination with the phenomenon and its style has, fortunately, not led to widespread experimentation with the drug. That so many students have avoided LSD clearly reflects the fact that several serious questions about its long-range effects remain unanswered--and that students in general are still cautious about drug taking.

There is a relevant point to be made here concerning the use of hard drugs on campus. One of the standing arguments against the use of marijuana has been that it leads to the use of heroin and other addicting drugs. Our figures do not seem to support this theory: While nearly half of all college students have used marijuana, less than one percent report the frequent or habitual use of any hard drug.

Pot: Nearly half of all respondents say they smoke pot sometimes; 13 percent classify themselves as frequent users. Despite continued heavy penalties in most states for possession of marijuana, the sweet smell of grass is wafting ever more thickly across the land.

(continued overleaf)

Our survey indicates that men are more adventurous por users than women. This pattern holds for all other drugs except barbiturates, of which women are slightly more frequent users. When students are classified according to family income, a reversal of a traditional trend appears. Thirty years ago, young people from lower income groups were considerably more likely to smoke marijuana than were those from the upper-middle class, primarily because it was available almost exclusively in lower-class and minority-group areas. Today, however, students in the lowest family-income bracket use pot slightly less than the average of all students, while those in the highest income group smoke considerably more than the average. Clearly, pot has become part of the life style of the affluent young.

As for the legalization of marijuana, smokers and nonsmokers differed widely--and predictably.

There is a clear-cut and easily understandable relationship between marijuana use and opinions regarding its legalization. Not quite half (46 percent) of all students feel that pot should be legalized--either without restrictions or with the same regulations that now apply to cigarettes and liquor. It should be noted that this figure is almost the same as the percentage of students who have tried pot. And, as one might expect, those who have never smoked it hold the most conservative views regarding its legalization: A quarter of the nonusers believe that pot is dangerous and leads to hard-drug usage--while only two percent of all users and one percent of frequent smokers concur with this opinion. Conversely, 67 percent of the users are for legalization, while only 25 percent of the students who have never tried pot want it legalized. Experience with weed clearly tends to lessen fears about it.

Since nearly half the students in America smoke pot, nearly half the students are criminals. Possession of marijuana is a major crime--a felony in most states. Some sociologists have argued that smoking it tends to radicalize the user, since by lighting up, he considers the laws against it invalid; and this, it's argued, leads to a critical examination of the other laws and policies that regulate society. Whether or not pot smoking does, in fact, cause students to become more radical is moot; but those who do smoke are far to the left--politically and socially--of those who don't.

Smokers and nonsmokers share a belief that working within the system is a viable, effective way to bring about change; but on other political issues, they differ considerably. Among frequent users, for instance, 70 percent believe that we should pull out of Vietnam immediately. This is almost twice the average of all students and more than three times as high as the percentage among nonusers. Similarly, frequent users are far more inclined to believe that revolution is the answer to America's ills. This association of pot and radicalism is a tempting premise for sociological speculation. But since it's impossible to establish that one leads to the other, all that can be said is that pot is as much a part of the radical life style as long hair and hard rock.

Sexual Activity: Our survey shows a dramatic departure from the degree of permissiveness among the college students who were surveyed by Kinsey more than a generation ago. While many authorities have suggested that the sexual revolution of the Sixties was more a matter of increased frankness in speech than of significant changes in behavior, our data reveal a major change in sexual activity on campus. Kinsey reported that 49.4 percent of the males and 73 percent of the females in his college samples had not had premarital intercourse by the age of 21. We found that these figures, for our total sample, have dropped to 18 percent for males and 49 percent for females. These figures are even more impressive when it is realized that few of our subjects have reached their 21st birthday.

Since a relationship appeared earlier between heavy pot use and political radicalism, we investigated the possibility of a relationship between heavy pot use and sexual activity. The two tables that follow measure the frequency of sexual intercourse among those students who said they never use marijuana and its incidence among those who said they use pot often.

The most startling correlation here is among females: 62 percent of the girls

who have never used pot have never had sexual intercourse, while only 14 percent of the girls who use pot frequently remain virgins. Most interesting of the statistics applying to men: Only 20 percent of the men who never use pot reported that they have intercourse frequently, while more than twice as many (43 percent) of the male marijuana users said they frequently make love.

Another correlation: a test of the political attitudes of those students who said they engage in intercourse frequently. These students come out slightly to the left on most issues and take significantly more left-wing positions than the average on two particular questions.

As we noted earlier, a cause-and-effect relationship cannot be inferred from the correlation we found among pot smoking, sexual activity and political attitudes. It does seem, however, to indicate that those students who are personally liberated also tend toward political radicalism. Their life style consistently reflects a viewpoint that is at variance with virtually all accepted norms.

Population Control: There are too many people in the world--at least that's the message from population biologists such as Dr. Paul Ehrlich (see last month's Playboy Interview). Crowding already amounts to a crisis, they say, and we must take active steps to slow down the birth rate if we are to survive. One such step is legalized abortion. It is still, however, a highly controversial issue. To the liberal audience, the good guys are everyone in favor of repeal of antiabortion laws; and because their Church is officially and rigidly against abortion under any circumstances, Roman Catholics are widely cast as the villains: This situation makes student responses to the question regarding abortion especially relevant.

Abortion--all Students

All abortion should be illegal; it's murder .......... 7%

Therapeutic abortion should be made legal .......... 31%

Women should be free to have abortions for any reason they want .......... 62%

Students' predominant support for unrestricted abortion indicates that on campus, at least, the fight has been won by the liberals. Proof that society as a whole is at least beginning to think this way as well lies in the fact that three states--Hawaii, Alaska and New York--have repealed their old, restrictive abortion laws and now permit abortion on request. In addition, 12 other states have enacted modified abortion-reform statutes. (For more information on the subject, see The Abortion Revolution, by Robert Hall, M.D., on page 112.)

More surprising here than the totals, however, is the breakdown according to religion.

The Catholic response is the surprise. If Catholic students were holding the orthodox line, 100 percent would consider abortion murder. Instead, almost 90 percent favor abortion of some sort and nearly half believe that voluntary abortion for any reason should be legalized. The men in the Catholic hierarchy who are struggling to liberalize the Church's stand on abortion clearly have the support of the young, who are most likely to be affected by that position.

A final point on student opinion about population: Despite the urging of men such as Ehrlich that people who want large families should adopt children, the idea remains unpopular with students. It has never been a fashionable practice and, in keeping with tradition, over 70 percent of all students say they plan to adopt no children. As for having their own, 63 percent say they intend to have two children or fewer.

From the statistics, today's college student emerges as a concerned, reasonable and angry citizen--concerned about Vietnam, the environment and the racial crisis. He is reasonable about drugs and ways to reform America, and angry with an unresponsive political structure. And he is markedly different from his parent generation in all these things.

In his personal style, he is open and eager for change. He accepts marijuana as a pleasure and is sexually less inhibited than any generation in this country's history.

Politically, he's a liberal: not a middle-of-the-roader, not a radical. He refuses to believe either that he is politically ineffectual or that the only way to restructure the system is to tear it down. Despite countless violent eruptions on campuses in recent years, he is ideologically opposed to violence--whether it takes the form of an Asian war, a campus demonstration or authoritarian repression. But he is dangerously frustrated, and it's not hard to understand why. Three quarters of the students polled want a swift withdrawal from Indochina; and their President derides or ignores them and invades Cambodia. Fewer than 15 percent feel that marijuana is dangerous; and there is talk in Congress of no-knock laws and stiffer pot-use penalties. Environmental problems rank third on the students' list of vital issues, yet no one seriously believes that we have even begun to wage the war for ecological survival. And students are being killed as well as condemned for their views.

Under the circumstances, it is almost incredible that their sense of isolation and frustration has not led to more extensive violence and bloodshed than it has. That the young apparently have not lost faith in their country and its Government is a testament to their good sense, self-confidence and tenacious humanity.