Lemondrop

While some see college as a hotbed of experimental LUGs -- "lesbians until graduation" -- a new study says a better term might be "liberals until graduation." According to a study by UCLA's Higher Eduction Research Institute, students tend to become more left-wing in their political views each year, and after college, many become more conservative again.

Among the students followed for the first three years of college, support for legalized abortion rose from 52 to 60 percent, and support for gay marriage rose from 54 to 66 percent. Support for defense spending fell from 34 to 25 percent. And the number of students who stopped attending religious services altogether doubled during that time.

The college shift toward liberalism has long been attributed to the influence of professors -- you know, the left-wing elitist intelligentsia. But the UCLA study found that other students actually had the most impact.

That makes sense to us, since college is a time of experimenting, exposure to new ideas and rebellion. "If you find yourself in a peer group where, on balance, the attitudes lean left, you'll tend to move in that direction," explained researcher Alexander Astin.