Cow’s Got Your Tongue?

Gender

59.7% of our respondents identified themselves as female, and 30.2% identified themselves as male. The remaining 10% either identified themselves as non-binary (4%) or preferred not to self-identify (6%). This was roughly consistent with UC Davis’ undergraduate population demographics — 56.1% of students are female, 39% male, 2% non-binary and 2.3% not reported.

Race

We duplicated the United States Census’ methods for recording a respondent’s race. Our sample had a higher percentage of Asian students than the overall UC Davis undergraduate population (49.3% of our respondents were Asian, whereas the overall percentage is 36%). Latino students were slightly underrepresented in our sample — 20% of our respondents were Latino, whereas Davis’ overall percentage of Latino undergraduates was 25.2%.

Sexual orientation

59.4% of our respondents identified as heterosexual. 73.6% of UC Davis undergraduates identify as heterosexual, meaning that we slightly over-sampled non-heterosexual students.

Topics that students avoid posting about publicly

UC Davis students are self-censoring about immigration policy online at higher rates than other topics. 17% of students who responded to the question “Which of the following topics would you like to post about publicly, yet avoid posting about publicly?” selected “Immigration policy”.

Students self-censored more frequently online than on campus across all topics. The most frequently cited reason for online self censorship was concerns about surveillance (34.6% of self-censoring respondents cited this). The most frequently occurring topic/self-censorship reason pairing was immigration/surveillance concerns, with 31.1% of respondents selecting this.

Familiarity with campus speech policy

Engagement with institutional speech norms presumes some familiarity with them. Among our respondents, 57.2% described themselves as “slightly familiar” or “not familiar at all” with UC Davis’s speech policies. Only 13% reported being “very” or “extremely” familiar. This finding aligns with broader national patterns: the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reports that 50% of college students nationally describe themselves as “not very aware” or “not aware at all” of their campus’s written protest policies. UC Davis sits roughly seven percentage points behind that benchmark, suggesting students at UC Davis enter campus speech conversations with somewhat less procedural knowledge than the national student body.

Free speech absolutism

When asked to rate their agreement with the statement, “All types of speech, including political protesting, controversial opinions, hate speech, and more, should be allowed on campus,” 36.8% of respondents at least somewhat disagreed, while 30.8% at least somewhat agreed. The remainder selected neutral responses. This near-even split suggests UC Davis students do not converge around a shared position on the absolutist framing of campus speech rights — a finding that complicates narratives positing a unified student stance in either direction.

Campus Speech Environment

A relatively large proportion of survey respondents generally agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that the climate on campus prevents people from speaking their opinions. These results are slightly higher than the ones generated by a nation-wide study by the Knight Foundation, in which 60% of respondents agreed that their campus climate prevented people from speaking their mind. Qualitative research such as in-depth interviews with students would be necessary to explore the reasons for such sentiments.   

Campus Discomfort

A more granular pattern emerges when discomfort is linked to identity. Respondents who reported feeling uncomfortable on campus because of something said about their race were over three times more likely to avoid discussing racial issues on campus than respondents who had not experienced such discomfort (41.4% versus 18.4%, p<.001). Similar associations appeared across five of six identity-topic pairs tested, including sexual orientation paired with gender and LGBTQ+ issues, and political beliefs paired with domestic politics. The directional consistency of these findings suggests that identity-based discomfort and topic-specific avoidance may be linked in ways that warrant further investigation.

Comfort sharing opinions by setting

A substantial percentage of UC Davis students do not feel comfortable speaking their minds in places where college education occurs. In public campus spaces, 38.8% of respondents report being somewhat or extremely uncomfortable expressing their opinions. In classroom discussions, that figure is 32.9%. Classrooms and public campus spaces are precisely the venues where students are supposed to test ideas against one another, encounter views they hadn’t considered and develop the capacity for respectful, productive disagreement in line with the UC Davis Principles of Community. If a third or more of our sample is uncomfortable with those exchanges, it may indicate substantial room for improving the existing speech environment. 

The Knight Foundation survey (which asked an identical question but didn’t include a neutral option) found that only 59% of students felt comfortable sharing their opinions in public spaces on campus, and 60% felt comfortable in class discussions. This means that our data is consistent with a larger, national survey, but further analysis is required to learn why students are so uncomfortable. 

Our data is inconclusive on this point. The possible explanations range, and aren’t mutually exclusive — fear of social backlash from peers, concern that a statement made will follow them professionally, a lack of trust in faculty or administration, exhaustion with particular topics, uncertainty about their own views, or the simple difficulty of speaking in a room of strangers. 

This is the central case for further work. Qualitative data, such as in-depth interviews with students and other community members on campus could allow researchers to move from documenting this phenomenon to explaining it. 

Comfort sharing opinions across all settings

Exposure to different viewpoints by campus location (viewpoint_d)

However, it would be a mistake to read these findings as evidence of a campus consumed by silence. The picture is more interesting than that. When we asked respondents whether they encounter views different from their own across various campus settings, large majorities said yes. In public spaces on campus, 60% agree they are exposed to differing viewpoints. In student organizations, 54% agree; in university courses, 53% agree; and even in campus workplaces — typically the most constrained of these settings — 36% agree, with only a fifth disagreeing outright.

This suggests a different diagnosis than the one often offered in national debates over college speech. Students are being exposed to different viewpoints — the question for educators is how to encourage students to engage with it, rather than retreat. Programmatic interventions, faculty training, and the kind of constructive dialogue initiatives that the Knight study found students themselves want to see (page 4) could all be measures to address this issue.

(3) University of California Information Center

Fall enrollment at a glance. (2022, February 10). University of California.https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/fall-enrollment-glance 

• Note: used for official UC Davis population demographics 

(4) United States Census Bureau

• About the Topic of Race.https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html

  • Note: Reference for the methodology used to record respondent race.