University employees donated $46,284 to political campaigns this season, and 96 percent of it went to presidential candidate Barack Obama and other Democrats.
Only three of the 64 University employees who donated gave to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. None of them were available to interview for this story.

The donation disparity is just as wide nationally. According to the Center of Responsive Politics, university professors across the United States have given $12.5 million to Obama and $1.5 million to McCain.
“It’s not that surprising that most people have donated to Obama and not McCain,” said Lars Skalnes, dean of the UO political science department. It basically confirms what we already knew about the political leanings of professors, he said.
“The extent of the lopsidedness does surprise me,” said Tony Kaminski, University student and vice president of the College Democrats. “But the fact that (Obama) is getting more money? No, because he’s getting more money from almost every segment of society.”
That might be true, but at University of Oregon, being politically left-leaning is nothing new. In 2004, University employees only donated about $28,000, and although none of it went to George W. Bush, only about $1,500 went to Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith.
In contrast, there seems to be more Republican support at Oregon State University. Even though OSU employees gave about $53,000 to Obama and other Democrats this year and only about $2,500 to McCain, in 2004 about seven OSU employees gave roughly $6,600 to Bush and other Republicans.
The evidence for such a political disparity on campuses is off-putting to some.
“I think it’s not a good thing at all,” said Steven Buccola, economics professor at OSU. “The lack of diversity of ideas on campuses is pretty disturbing.”
Buccola is one of two OSU employees who contributed to McCain this year.
University policy states that employees are allowed to participate in political campaigns as long as they’re not using University resources. No one seems to take issue with the policy, but many take issue when a professor’s political leanings encroach into his or her teaching.
“If a professor does want to commit some of his time to campaign for Obama, [Jeff] Merkley or any of our other Democratic candidates, I actually would like to see that because it’s great to see more people getting involved in the political process,” said Aaron Polk, University student and chair of the College Republicans.
But in his history of economics class, Polk said his professor would sometimes “go on tangents basically, just to bash those who have right-of-center values.”
“I would say that your average student is a lot smarter than that, but then again,” Polk said, “you have a few who just sort of believe what they hear and what they see.”
He’s not alone.
“I think it’s a pretty bad thing (if professors bring up politics),” Kaminski, the College Democrat, said. “I don’t like it when I have overly biased professors, whether or not they agree with me.”
OSU’s Buccola agrees.
“My guess is that it does influence students to some extent,” he said, adding that only after college are most students exposed to most conservative ideas.
“Students, by the time they graduate, have more of an orientation toward liberal ideas,” Buccola continued. “On the other hand, the average student, after they leave campus, moves rightward. Because most students go into business in one way or another, they become exposed to the marketplace and begin to understand why markets work and how they do, and they develop more sympathy.”
[email protected]