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A few weeks ago, I helped my 18-year-old sister move into her freshman dorm at Hillsdale College in Michigan. I was anxious for her -- I worried that the female culture at her school would be similar to that at my own alma mater, Tufts University in Medford, Mass. As a reserved evangelical from Colorado Springs, Colo., I was shocked by a lot of things at Tufts when I entered in the fall of 2003. What shocked me more than anything, however, was the way women treated other women. I regularly heard young women refer to each other using the...

GENERATION OBAMA FIRST-TIME VOTERS ARE GLOBAL, DIVERSE, COLORBLIND - AND LOVE BARACK By JOHN ZOGBY Are the kids all right? Not if you listen to some of our leading social commentators. To hear people like Juliet Schor and William Bennett tell it, today's youth have been virtually brainwashed by marketers, advertisers, and a mushy-headed professoriate. But if your measure of "all right" is a group that is not just tolerant of but welcomes diversity, if it is young adults who march in lockstep with no political ideology, who in the majority are willing to think through the subtleties of some...

Newsmax.com Zogby: First Globals Are Redefining America Wednesday, August 13, 2008 8:44 PM By: David A. Patten A demographic earthquake is taking place in America that is transforming our traditional society, argues pollster John Zogby in his newly released book, “The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream.” And these changes could have seismic implications for the coming 2008 election showdown. This new ascending group of Americans Zogby calls the “First Globals,” and unlike other demographic groups such as “Generation X” or “baby boomers,” this group is making some radical departures from traditional American...

August 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a culture where cold, hard science is king, one doctor is questioning whether the theory of "safe sex" can measure up.In her pamphlet "Sense and Sexuality: The College Girl's Guide to Real Protection in a Hooked-up World," to be released later this month, Miriam Grossman, M.D., uses her medical training and 10 years' experience as a staff psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to expose the physical and mental dangers of the uninhibited sexual climate that dominates the modern college campus.In the introduction, Grossman describes the tragic and recurring scene in her...

LifeNews.com Note: Maria Vitale is a LifeNews.com Opinion Columnist and the Education Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio. One of my favorite times of the day is logging onto Facebook, to see what my friends are up to.I find some friends have posted photos...others have joined groups ranging from UK Beekeepers to Evangelium Vitae...others have become fans of Mother Teresa or Ronald Reagan...and still others are giving status reports on what they did this past weekend. I love...

We find ourselves going into this fall’s general election as have with many in the past. We’ve been told to respect the youth vote at our peril. We’ve been told the youth’s opinion matters. We’ve been told they’ll turn the election if their concerns aren’t addressed. And they’ve seldom turned out on Election Day in numbers that mattered; in fact their turnout has been downright embarrassing. This time we’re told all will be different. Should we be concerned? Are they going to cast informed votes, and if their candidate wins and our nation suffers, should we hold them solely responsible?...

New York, July 18 (PTI) More babies were born in the United States last year than any other year in history, pointing to a potential start of a new baby boom like the one that followed World War II. A record number of 4,315,000 babies were born in the US last year, nearly the double of those born a century ago, the National Centre for Health Statistics said. "It's a record, and it's a particularly interesting record because the year it beats is 1957, which was the height of the baby boom," Robert Engelman, author of "More: Population, Nature and...

WHEN Peter Leahy joined the Australian Army 37 years ago, our soldiers were highly proficient in counterinsurgency warfare. Coming out of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, the army had been engaged continuously in unconventional conflict, including the Malayan emergency in the 1950s and confrontation with Indonesia in the early 1960s, followed by Vietnam. Nearly four decades on, the army is back in the counterinsurgency game in Afghanistan, acquiring new war-fighting skills. Army planners are now writing a new counterinsurgency doctrine that embraces a wholly different battlefield to that experienced in the jungles of South Vietnam. Lieutenant-General Leahy,...

Recently, a friend described an exchange between a mother and her son, a senior at a top university. He wanted to marry his long-time girlfriend. His mother retorted that she was more ambitious for him than his girlfriend was; she advised him to avoid an “early” marriage that might limit his options. Another friend confided to me that he had counseled his high-school-age daughter to establish a decade’s worth of graduate school and career development before marrying. Marriage would complicate the task of achieving financial independence. And he just wasn’t sure that men could be trusted. Without a Script Many...

...Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is actively courting Christian voters, many of them the children of evangelical Protestants who have voted Republican for decades and were instrumental in putting George W. Bush in the White House.

JWT survey shows positive side of younger workers By Jeanie Casison While older employees often call out their 21- to 29-year-old Millennial colleagues for not showing respect, lacking a strong work ethic and being impatient on the job, new research by New York-based ad agency JWT reveal that these negative perceptions may be off the mark. According to the U.S. study, "Millennials at Work: Myths vs. Reality," the younger generation is more serious than people think. When asked about the statement "I think a formal appearance at the workplace is important for career success," 67 percent of Millennial respondents agreed...

Pope Benedict XVI has arrived on the stage at the youth rally at St. Joseph's Seminary at Yonkers, NY.

Your Eminence, Dear Brother Bishops, Dear Young Friends,"Proclaim the Lord Christ … and always have your answer ready for people who ask the reason for the hope that is within you" (1 Pet 3:15). With these words from the First Letter of Peter I greet each of you with heartfelt affection. I thank Cardinal Egan for his kind words of welcome and I also thank the representatives chosen from among you for their gestures of welcome. To Bishop Walsh, Rector of Saint Joseph Seminary, staff and seminarians, I offer my special greetings and gratitude. Young friends, I am very...

During an era when two-thirds of young Catholics say they can be good Catholics without going to mass and many believe in a woman's right to choose abortion and view premarital sex as morally acceptable, Karen and David Hickey might be considered renegades - because they are so devout. The lives of the suburban couple and their five young children revolve around the Catholic Church, and they stand out as devoted because so many others do not follow the teachings of their church to the letter. For the Hickeys and a community of young, conservative Catholics who piously follow the...

THE Pope has decided he will not wear the vestments specially designed for World Youth Day and billed as "chic clergy couture" on the WYD website. The "earthy-red" coloured vestments feature the Southern Cross constellation on the front and an indigenous feature titled "Marjorie's Bird" on the back. The Pope is known to dislike vestment symbols that are not explicitly Christian. He may, though, wear some variation on the vestment design, a WYD spokeswoman said. The snub may be the first of many in the clash of cultures between the liturgically and theologically conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the exuberance...

Think Evangelicals Vote In Lockstep? Meet The Routhe Family By Melinda Henneberger   Like the families they grew up in,  Aaron and Ginny Routhe are devout evangelical Christians. Like his parents and hers, they also consider themselves pro-life. But where that's led them politically comes as a bit of a shock to their staunchly Republican elders. "It is generational; the way we view the Gospel is more well-rounded-or we see it that way," laughs Ginny, 33, who runs an eco-friendly diaper business while her husband works on a graduate degree at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "We vote Democratic,...

College students want credit card companies to market themselves more fairly, according to a nationwide survey taken by a credit card watchdog group. 1500 students from 40 different colleges were polled and 80% of the students felt they were lured into bad credit card deals and have been racking up big bills before they graduate. Second year student Carol Castillo feels the credit card companies tricked her and that hidden interest rates and other fees not made clear by credit card companies put her in a bind. "Well, now I am in trouble and now I owe over $3000 in...

Young Americans have a reverence for national institutions, traditions and family values, a U.S. survey indicates. A survey of so-called "millennials" -- those between 21 and 29 -- revealed the group overwhelmingly said they support monogamy, marriage, the U.S. Constitution and the military, The Washington Times reported Sunday. "We were completely surprised. There has been a faulty portrayal of millennials by the media -- television, films, news, blogs, everything. These people are not the self-entitled, coddled slackers they're made out to be. Misnomers and myths about them are all over the place," said Ann Mack, who directed the survey and...

There was a time when not having sex consumed a very small part of Janie Fredell’s life, but that, of course, was back in Colorado Springs. It seemed to Fredell that almost no one had sex in Colorado Springs. Her hometown was extremely conservative, and as a good Catholic girl, she was annoyed by all the fundamentalist Christians who would get in her face and demand, as she put it to me recently, “You have to think all of these things that we think.” They seemed not to know that she thought many of those things already. At her public...

SCRANTON, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama on Monday promised Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans help with their grievances - save one. "I know it drives you nuts. But I'm not going to lower the drinking age," the presidential candidate said. Army veteran Ernest Johnson, 23, of Connecticut, said one of the things that peeved him before he turned 21 was that he couldn't come home and drink a beer - even though he was old enough to serve in the armed services and die for his country. Obama told Johnson he sympathized, but that setting the legal drinking age at...

SCRANTON, Pa. -- Democrat Barack Obama on Monday promised Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans help with their grievances - save one. "I know it drives you nuts. But I'm not going to lower the drinking age," the presidential candidate said. Army veteran Ernest Johnson, 23, of Connecticut, said one of the things that peeved him before he turned 21 was that he couldn't come home and drink a beer - even though he was old enough to serve in the armed services and die for his country. Obama told Johnson he sympathized, but that setting the legal drinking age at...

A new study shows young adult women are becoming more tolerant of pornography. The research -- part of a larger study called "Project Ready" -- found that college-aged women could be more accepting of pornography than their fathers. According to the study, 65 percent of men, 48 percent of women, 36 percent of fathers, and 20 percent of mothers agreed that pornography was an acceptable way for someone to express their sexuality. Pat Trueman of the Alliance Defense Fund says the results are not surprising. "... You've got a generation of people growing up embracing something that is not helpful,...

Spring break has turned violent and deadly in unrelated incidents on Galveston Island. A 16-year-old girl from Deer Park drowned amid strong winds and currents. Elsewhere, a number of fights capped a concert on East Beach. A dozen were arrested. At spring break destinations everywhere, these scenes are often repeated. Yet psychologist Laurence Abrams says teens are just trying to enjoy themselves and the alcohol, sex and trouble tend to come with that. "They're not trying to hurt themselves. They're trying to have fun. Sometimes they make mistakes, as we all do. I'm not in favor of it. Don't misunderstand...

March 5, 2008 (Computerworld) Enrollments in computer science programs, which plunged after the dot-com bust, may have leveled off, according to new data from the Computing Research Association (CRA). The group follows year-over-year enrollment and graduate trends at 170 Ph.D.-granting institutions. But this leveling is happening only after the number of bachelor's degree graduates has apparently hit a trough. In the 2006-'07 academic year, only 8,021 students graduated with computer science degrees from these schools -- the lowest number of graduates this decade. By contrast, in 2003-'04 -- the high point of this decade -- 14,185 students were awarded bachelor's...

BAGHDAD — After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach. In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives. “I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over...

BAGHDAD: After almost five years of war, many young Iraqis, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach. In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives. "I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us," said Sara...

Students Defect from Sciences Published On 2/7/2008 1:31:21 AM By ADITI BALAKRISHNA Crimson Staff Writer CLARIFICATION APPENDED As Harvard prepares to stake its future—and at least $1 billion of its funds—on the sciences, undergraduates are fleeing the discipline in large numbers, opting instead for concentrations in the social sciences and the humanities. According to a cross-analysis of data from the admissions department and the Harvard College facebook, there is a wide gap in the number of students who wish to pursue science at the start of their freshman year and the number of students who actually do. Between one-third and...

Like many campuses, Purdue University has some traditional hot spots for romance -- "The Old Pump," where couples used to meet after dark, and a bell tower known as a lucky place to propose marriage. But engineering major Amy Penner has been so busy volunteering with a women's engineering group and planning her career that she's only dimly aware of them. Her boyfriend has left campus to get a doctorate overseas; asked how much time she spends dating, she says, "That would be zero." Remember the movie "Love Story" and its star-crossed student lovers? Such torrid campus romances may be...

With little media fanfare, Hollywood is creating a new genre of films marketed to the prolific ticket buyers who make up its target demographic, teens and young adults. Though not known as a conservative bastion, the movie industry has always been quick to pick up trends that turn a profit. And among America's young people, pro-life is in. Consider the recent sleeper hit "Juno," the story of a precocious 16-year-old who becomes pregnant following a tryst with her best friend. Juno initially contemplates abortion but hesitates after talking with a pro-life counselor. Juno ultimately decides for life, giving her child...

Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris. The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday. They say they...

Iowa Caucus Results Show that 'Spin' is Out, Authenticity is In, as Presidential Candidates Must Match the Generational Characteristics of the Youth Vote NEW YORK, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The victories of Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama with a good showing for John McCain in Iowa demonstrate that spin is out and authenticity is in, as Presidential candidates address the most important voting block in the 2008 race: Generations X and Y. "Some have overlooked what Iowans told us with certainty last night - a critical factor in this election is not race, religion, or gender, but speaking the language...

More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, according to a survey released on Sunday. Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said. "These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a...

LaghrissKhadr Casablanca, Morocco - With a greeting that was as telling as it was macabre, Imane Laghriss dropped her satchel on the table of a trendy coffee shop here recently. "It's stuffed with explosives, watch out!" snapped the young woman, echoing the grim humor commonly heard among Moroccan teenagers. But Ms. Laghriss's remark carried with it a degree of stark reality. Four years ago, she and her twin sister were arrested for planning to blow themselves up inside Morocco's parliament. They were 14 at the time. The two were sentenced to five years in jail in 2003. After serving 18...

This week, 13 members of the Harvard class of 1967 sent a letter to President Drew Faust regarding a perceived lack of activism opposing the Iraq war on the Harvard campus. In the letter, the alumni asked Ms. Faust to create a task force in order to unearth the root cause of “widespread apathy and political indifference of the student body at Harvard.” The letter cited, among other reasons, Harvard has the largest financial endowment in the country and therefore should have no monetary excuse for pandering to the prevailing “political mood in the USA” by not encouraging opposition to...

If you're over 50, you've probably had this experience: You're standing at a checkout counter, ready to pay, and the twentysomething behind the register is talking on her cell phone. So you wait, and wait, and wait, and when the clerk finally finishes her conversation, she offers not an apology, but a grimace that suggests you've interrupted. Sound familiar? It has a name: the Service Gap. That's not a hip clothing store for soldiers. Or a new motto for the London subway system. It's business-speak to describe a phenomenon fueling plenty of holiday-shopping frustration: the difference in how baby boomers...

MC LEAN, Va., Dec. 10 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today the Fred Thompson campaign announced its Young Professionals for Fred Thompson national and local leadership. George Prescott Bush will serve as the National Chair of the organization, while Nicolee Ambrose will serve as the Executive Director of the Young Professionals for Fred Thompson National Steering committee. "As a young professional, I am pleased to support Senator Fred Thompson because of his consistent conservative record in public service and sincere vision to pursue a reform-based domestic agenda in Washington D.C," said George P. Bush. "From addressing grave forecasts in connection with the...

2007 Trends Analysis: Americans Reformulating Christianity By Audrey Barrick Christian Post Reporter Tue, Dec. 04 2007 09:34 AM ET As fewer Americans identify themselves with Christianity, research indicates that those who remain Christian are redefining what "Christian" means. Study: Christianity No Longer Looks Like Jesus Younger generations are not bound by traditional parameters of the Christian faith and instead are embracing values that are not necessarily based on biblical foundations, according to a recent analysis by The Barna Group. Although faith is an acceptable attribute and pursuit among most young people, their notions of faith do not align with conventional...

You have to feel for the residents. These students are there for about four years .. nine months every year .. and they're really upset because the Statesboro City Council has put the brakes on some of the wilder drinking happy hours at area bars. Soooooo .... A couple of bar owners run for the city council, and the students launch a voter registration drive to get them elected. Students voting? Fine. And it is so good to see the students at Georgia Southern have finally found something that will drive them to the polls ... preserving their ability to...

Changing our morality to fit the politically correct version of the day would cause our worship of God to be a mere vanity. In a national climate already inundated with ersatz, narcissism, vanity, pop culture nonsense and media fired tripe, who would willingly pull their feet off the only unmovable object left in the world, Jesus the Rock of our Salvation? He said “Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. (Mk 7:7)

Yosemite may be nice and all, but Tommy Nguyen of San Francisco would much prefer spending his day in front of a new video game or strolling around the mall with his buddies. What, after all, is a 15-year-old supposed to do in what John Muir called "the grandest of all special temples of nature" without cell phone service? "I'd rather be at the mall because you can enjoy yourself walking around looking at stuff as opposed to the woods," Nguyen said from the comfort of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall. In Yosemite and other parks, he said, furrowing...

Last week, leading psychiatric researchers linked a 2004 increase in the suicide rate for children and adolescents to a warning by the Food and Drug Administration about the use of antidepressants in minors. The F.D.A. warning, the researchers suggested, might have resulted in severely depressed teenagers going without needed treatment. But the data in the study, which was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry and received widespread publicity, do not support that explanation, outside experts say. While suicide rates for Americans ages 19 and under rose 14 percent in 2004, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants in that group...

Young Americans today are more skeptical and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago, says a new study. Tue, Sep. 25, 2007 Posted: 11:19:17 AM EST Young Americans today are more skeptical and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago, says a new study. Negative perceptions toward the Christian faith have outweighed the positive as a growing percentage of younger Americans associate with a faith outside Christianity. Only 16 percent of non-Christians aged 16 to 29 years old said they have a "good impression" of Christianity,...

College students and other young adults aged 18 to 24 are spending more than $1 billion a year on bank overdraft fees, according to report released Monday by the Durham-based Center for Responsible Lending. This age group relies heavily on debit and credit cards often for small-purchases, leading to relatively higher fees incurred, the report found. Universities are facilitating the trend by partnering with banks in programs that adds debit card functions to student ID cards, said the non-profit group that consumer advocacy group. "Instead of protecting their financial well-being, these banks' overdraft loans are robbing young people of a...

Upon graduating from college, many twenty-somethings reconcile with living under their parents’ roofs until they can find full-time employment, pay for housing, feed, and clothe themselves. For some, there is the additional challenge of paying off college loans. “Student Monitor, a New Jersey research firm that specializes in the college market, puts a graduate's average student loan debt at $25,760, which will take an estimated 7.9 years to pay off.” Yale University’s Jing Cao has concluded that, “the current system forces college graduates into debt.” According to the experts, while paying off debt is important, the first priority of these...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new Harris Poll finds that Republicans and young adults are the most likely groups to oppose abortion, embryonic stem cell research and assisted suicide. The survey also showed that a candidate's view on abortion is the most likely to earn a voter's opposition compared with other social issues. The Harris Poll surveyed 2,694 adults online between August 7 and 13, and asked whether they support or abortion key social issues, including various topics of interest to the pro-life community. Polls that break down these political issues further than a support/oppose question normally show Americans oppose...

Young adults are living with their parents in ever increasing numbers, according to data from the most recent census released Wednesday by Statistics Canada, but sociologists attribute a large part of the latest rise to choice rather than necessity. Staying in school longer and difficulty finding a stable, full-time job are historical reasons behind a trend that has been on the upswing for the last two decades. But experts believe the most recent rise has been in large part fuelled by shifting family values -- both traditional and liberal. On the one hand, newcomers to Canada often expect their children...

Young Workers' Expectations Clash With Reality By LISA OSBURN   Bridgett Jones Short, foreground, owner of Jucos Salon in Birmingham, Ala., says that her 20-year-old hairstylist, Jordan Corley, background, is very mature for her age. Short is working on the hair of Leigh Ann Smith and Corley is working on Robin Zimmerman; both customers are from Hoover. (Photo by Beverly Taylor)     BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Sporting their "princess'' T-shirts and $100 sneakers, members of Generation Y grew up hearing they could conquer the world.Many of their parents started them on that journey with laptop computers, vehicles, cell phones, high-speed...

Last week I wrote about students who are bucking the trend of today’s college campuses and speaking out as conservatives. After reading my column mentioning high school senior Toni Woods, her teacher asked her, “Why would anyone talk about a 16-year-old no-nothing?� Gee, I wonder why only graying hippies and bra-burners want to attend left-wing conferences? After word got around about the article, another teacher called Toni a “traitor.� After years of teaching with a liberal bias, Toni went off and became a conservative. How dare she! There are thousands of young conservatives (especially Joe Logue who has dreams about...

High-risk employees in the American workplace outnumber those who are truly loyal, according to Walker Information’s most recent national study of employee loyalty. Although the percentage of truly loyal employees – 34 percent – is unchanged from two years ago, the percentage of employees categorized as high risk now exceeds those who are loyal, creating a widening gap for employers struggling to improve retention. The Walker Loyalty Report for Loyalty in the Workplace, examining trends in both employee loyalty and business ethics, reveals 36 percent of employees are high risk – a spike of five percentage points from 2005. Based...

The romantic guy might be found right on our college campuses. ADVERTISEMENT A recent study finds male undergraduate students were more likely than women to choose intimate relationships over their careers and education. While the results seem to contradict stereotypical notions of gender roles (women choose family and men choose high-powered jobs), perhaps it's a case of how "romance" is defined. Do guys equate a romantic relationship with a chance to get lucky? "It is ambiguous what this romantic relationship means," said Daniel Kruger, a social and evolutionary psychologist at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the...