College is a time that we often think of as being formative for personhood and subsequently also our personal opinion; a piece of the puzzle that makes up public opinion. But how much can we really still influence people’s personal opinions in college? In order to assess if public opinion as a whole can be shaped through institutions like private liberal arts colleges like St. Lawrence University, which have sometimes been accused of “liberalizing” students, we need to look at how students’ personal opinions are influenced in college, and to what extend in the first place an education does make a difference.

Public opinion is important because it affects the political behavior, particularly voting behavior, which is an essential part of a democratic country like the United States. Public opinion has the power to give a voice, but also exclude, discriminate and marginalize individuals or whole groups of the population.

Public opinion is made up of individuals with opinions that are products of one’s personality, social characteristics and interests. However, those individual opinions are also shaped by institutional, political and governmental forces; in short, by our environment. College is one of those institutions we think of as taking part in the process of political socialization, the acquiring of political attitudes. St. Lawrence University takes pride in fostering students who are “a collaborative community of learners who value thought and action.”

But how much credit can a college really take for its student body? Especially knowing that, overwhelmingly, our political opinions are formed during our childhood and early adult years, and that once these attitudes are established, we typically like to choose to center our social and often even professional lives around activities that reinforce those same attitudes.

The question arises how much real influence colleges like St. Lawrence have to make students reflect or even change their public opinions, and if there is even an incentive to do so. The concept of liberal arts has as its ultimate goal the cultivation of a holistically educated and reflected individual that will move through her life and through the world making informed decisions. Broadly, it would mean that Laurentians would contribute meaningfully to the public opinion and, if not defying, are at least aware of the influences of their self-interest, personal values and privileges.

However, increasingly institutions like St. Lawrence seem to cater to shelter their student body from those thought-stimulating and at times uncomfortable experiences altogether. Maybe it is seen part of the service package the school provides for almost $70,000 per academic year.

If students, and their parents, expect their personal opinions to remain unchanged, how much can we really claim our motto, fides et veritas? What and whose truths are we perpetuating?

Experiences have the power to change personal opinions. This is increasingly unlikely because if students are not exposed to different experiences, even different opinions, the change of meaningful dialogue is essentially diminished. I think this is a development not only at St. Lawrence, where people with diverse political opinions can be friends, and not because they look past their differences to acknowledge each other’s humanity, but rather because many people avoid talking about any political opinions in the first place.

Public opinion is subject to constant change based on new information we are provided with and increasingly, new emotions we might have about a topic. The question is, are we moving forward, or in circles?

I argue that if we are to spark the meaningful change that our education promises, if we are to trust, to have faith in truth, we need to collaboratively work on finding out what that truth might be in the first place. This means trial and error; it means heated debate, and it means confronting our differences and standing up for what we believe in. I think that it is not our fault that the world is the way it is, but it is our fault if it stays this way, and it represents the liberal arts education to me as much as the potential that I see and feel in our student body, among my peers, everyday.