George Walker Bush and John Forbes Kerry: The two men competing against each other in the cross-country sprint to the White House represent opposing political parties and hail from different corners of the country. But they’ve both shared their sexual histories with near-strangers in the vicinity of an open coffin and fondled the skull of Gerinomo at one of Yale’s secret societies. In hopes of building on this common ground, I drove to New Haven, Conn., to interview contemporary Yale students about the first all-Yale election in our nation’s history.

There is no shortage of opinions available on a college campus, but a liberal slant is still widespread. Thomas Frampton, for example, the Yale student who attempted to climb into Vice President Cheney’s VIP box at the convention shouting anti-war slogans, has become something of a campus anti-hero. Seeking a balanced, big tent of opinions, I arranged to meet a liberal, a conservative, and an independent student at the legendary Sally’s Pizza in New Haven.

Alyssa Rosenberg is a college junior and an activist Democrat who already serves as ward chairman in her local district. Alnawaz “Al” Jiwa is the brave soul who serves as the president of the Yale College Republicans. R. David Edelman is a sophomore from California active in the Independent Party of the Yale Political Union. Though falling well short of a statistically valid sample, these students were the panelists for what I hoped would be an open exchange of ideas and a snapshot of opinion at Messrs. Bush and Kerry’s alma mater.

It was agreed that roughly three-quarters of the students at this traditional Bush family finishing school would vote for Mr. Kerry. All agreed that the campus was energized about the election. Conservative students were passionate in their support of Mr. Bush while campus liberals were motivated mostly by an almost evangelical dislike of the president. While relations between the politically active students are cordial across ideological lines, occasionally the extremists exhibit flashes of intolerance.

Mr. Jiwa shared one recent example from these leafy front lines: “We were hanging up posters for a meeting of the Yale College Republicans all over campus and a lot of them got torn down. In fact, I saw one of the students who’s big in the ACLU on campus tearing one down.” When the College Republicans confronted the perpetrator, he reportedly replied, “You guys are very brave putting these posters up on campus, knowing they’re just going be ripped down in five minutes.” The selective enforcement of free speech rights almost made me nostalgic for my own college days. But then Ms. Rosenberg quickly reminded us that Gay and Lesbian Studies posters had also been torn down in her freshman year, a prime example of what Mr. Jiwa called “the feedback loop on both sides.”

I was amazed to hear that all of them knew students who believed Attorney General Ashcroft to be a greater threat to America than Osama Bin Laden. On a more heartening note, none could think of a single campus communist – not so long ago a muttering staple in bookstores and coffee houses. Political theater seems to be making a comeback, as with the “Die-In” that greeted the president of the Coca-Cola Co., Douglas Daft, when he came to speak on campus. Halfway through his talk, Mr. Daft found himself surrounded by students flopped around his podium covered in fake blood. Exactly what they were protesting was remembered less vividly. Anarchists have been reappearing on college campuses in numbers not seen since the days of William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, but this generation’s anarchists have a comparatively pacifist streak. Ms. Rosenberg confided that “all my anarchist friends are voting for Kerry.”

The students in the Independent Party of the Yale Political Union are less convinced than the anarchists. Mr. Edelman explained, however, that Mr. Bush had lost ground with many libertarians and independents because of his backing of the federal marriage amendment and, especially, his position limiting stem cell research. “The stance of the party on stem cell research is so contrary to science and progress, so anachronistic, that it makes it hard for me to imagine voting for them.”

Libertarian instincts seem to have reached the college mainstream. All agreed that this generation is more accepting of gay rights than its predecessors. A debate even ensued about whether the president genuinely supported the marriage amendment or proposed it as an election-year tactic. Ms. Rosenberg offered a novel solution to the debate over the nature of marriage, saying, “People who are really concerned about defending marriage in the United States should outlaw no-fault divorce, which is responsible for the skyrocketing divorce rate…they should make it harder for people to get divorced instead of making it harder to get married in the first place.”

Looking forward, the names of people they wanted to appear on future presidential tickets included, most prominently, Senator McCain and Mayor Giuliani for the Republicans and Senator Edwards, Barack Obama, and Senator Feinstein of California for the Democrats. They had respect for President Clinton’s political talents but contempt for his personal behavior, and all respected the discipline of the Republicans in staying on message during their convention. The common ground also included the balancing of balanced budget economic policies with more liberal social policies, an “interventionist” foreign policy, and an aggressive bipartisan pursuit of energy independence from the Middle East. When I asked who they thought would win the election, Mr. Jiwa confidently answered Mr. Bush. Mr. Edelman and Ms. Rosenberg couldn’t quite bring themselves to predict a Kerry victory. The students walking where Messrs. Bush and Kerry did decades ago remain engaged by the spirit of politics and the possibility of public service. The tone between these three students was one of informed debate but civil disagreement. In this, Congress could stand to take a refresher course: Today’s college students seem less likely to forget that their political opponent is not their enemy.