WaPo Wrings Hands Over Few College Coeds Running for Student Government

Apparently lacking any problems of graver concern in the D.C. area, today's Washington Post Metro section devoted front page real estate to young college women "Suffraging in silence."*

"On many college campuses," the subheader explains, "student government remains dominated by men, echoing gender gaps in state and national politics."

"For the past decade, women have outpaced men on key measures of college success," staff writer Jenna Johnson noted. "They attend college and graduate at higher rates, according to several studies, and they tend to earn higher grades."

Sounds impressive.

But alas, lamented Johnson, "on many campuses, student government is dominated by men, echoing gender gaps in state and national politics."

A few paragraphs later, however, Johnson noted that one reason is collegiate women tend to gravitate towards investing time and energy into extracurricular clubs that follow their interests:

Sometimes, they add, women gravitate to leadership of clubs or causes more in line with their career goals instead of jumping into what they might view as a boys club.

So rather than play campus politician in a vain effort at preparing for future political campaigning, more college coeds are focusing on preparing for careers in the private sector.

What's so wrong about that?

Johnson noted that American University made concerted efforts to boost female interest in the school's student government. Yet for all those efforts over the past five years, "[t]he share of women in the undergraduate senate has been around 40 percent in recent years, the [Women & Politics] institute said."

Perhaps the real story, if the Post is interested, is all the wasted money and energy that schools are exerting on politically correct efforts to socially engineer the democratic choices of its student bodies.

*the online headline is much less loaded: "On college campuses, a gender gap in student government."