Governor Fallin Scores Points with College Students

Thursday, February 5, 2015

By Brandon W. Lenoir

Absent from Governor Mary Fallin’s fifth State Of The State Address were the red meat issues of tax cuts and social issues. Instead, she took a more moderate tone outlining her general goals for the coming year. That fact was not lost on a group of Oklahoma State University students.

The students attended a State Of The State watch party on the campus of OSU to hear what the governor had to say about the direction of Oklahoma. Utilizing Perception Analyzer equipment to log their real-time reactions to the governor’s speech, the students indicated which issues they supported, and identified those that fell short.

Of the issues outlined by the governor, texting and driving received the most support from the students. Some of the students in attendance at the watch party are currently taking a course on Lobbying Strategies. Their semester long project is to advocate on behalf of an issue they find important. Texting and driving was their chosen issue, and they were pleased to hear the governor is supportive of their position to penalize those who text while driving.

The governor lost the students when she displayed the charts about the budget and spending. During the discussion following the speech, students state they thought the governor could have offered the information in a more compelling way. Young adults between the ages of 18 to 25 have grown up in the ‘information age’, and thus have high standards for how information is presented. This offers an interesting perspective for politicians seeking to encourage youth engagement in the political process.

Not surprisingly the differences between the students’ preferences about the issues tracked closely with the partisanship of each student. Interestingly, however, were the differences between the male and female students on some of the priorities outlined by the governor. The male students were more supportive of the governor’s call to fix the state’s crumbling infrastructure, while the female students gave the governor high marks for child abuse prevention, cyber security, reductions in the population of prisons, and issues surrounding education. In fact, female students were generally more supportive of the governor’s speech.

The group of students, mostly Political Science majors, was not a representative sample of the student body of OSU. They are, however, the students most likely to be our next generation of political leaders. They also have an above average interest in, and understanding of, politics. For those reasons their perspective on the direction of Oklahoma, and their opinions about the priorities outlined by Governor Fallin are both unique and valuable.

Overall the students thought the governor gave a good speech, and agreed with her general positions. They look forward, however, to hearing the specifics of how she and the legislature will accomplish those goals … details that the students said were not included in the State Of The State address.

Brandon W. Lenoir, Ph.D., is a political scientist at Oklahoma State University

Story originally in Tulsa World