University of California-Berkeley Top Questions

Nerd

The stereotypes of the students at Berkeley are the ever-protesting left wing hippies, and while the political activism on campus is very much alive here, it is not something that everyone participates in. There are republican groups on campus just as there are democrat. No matter what a person's belief or political persuasion, you are bound to find a group that caters to you.

The UC Berkeley stereotype unfortunately doesn't fall into one of the more-or-less innocent high school cross-sections like "jock", "stoner", etc.; I say unfortunately because the stereotype that -does- apply is a racial one: UC Berkeley is known for the high percentage of Asian students in attendance, in spite of administrative efforts to promote a more diverse campus population. Though the campus might seem to be, in many minds, the "liberal" masthead of the UC system and origin of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960's, Berkeley's liberal identity is in fact shifting into a patchwork of varied--often conflicting--ideologies; the Berkeley College Republicans even made national headlines recently with their affirmative action bake sale, and regardless of how one feels about that, it bred the sort of vivid discussion you'd expect at a university full of young, bright, and intensely varied people. Ultimately, it is unfair to say that UC Berkeley is at all culturally, racially, or ideologically hegemonic; there's a campus or club association for everyone, and a trip from any given class to another will result in overhearing animated, passionate dialogues in many different languages and discourse registers. But in the end, stereotypes are just that: unfair.