Sabato ends 35 years of politics class

The stage might have belonged to U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, but the class belonged to professor Larry J. Sabato.

That, however, is about to change.

While Kaine explained his heart change on same-sex marriage to the 400-plus students at the University of Virginia’s Introduction to American Politics — “My kids said, ‘Equal is equal, Dad, it isn’t that hard’” — Sabato sat on a folding chair offstage for the last time.

“I’ve been doing the beginning class for 35 years and, to be honest, as you get older, you just don’t have the energy you used to have and this class takes a lot of energy,” Sabato said as students swarmed Kaine following his talk.

“We’ve had something like 20,000 students come through this class and when the grandkids of former students started coming, I said maybe that’s it.”

Officially known as PLAP 101, the large, lecture-based class is being deep-sixed by the university’s Department of Politics.

“There will be no PLAP 101 as we’ve known it. The department doesn’t have the graduate resources to continue a large class as it is now being taught,” Sabato said. “There will be several small sections of the class offered by various faculty [members], from time to time.”

A nationally known political pundit and prognosticator who often comments on politics for newspapers and television, Sabato is the medium behind Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a website featuring detailed and frequently updated analysis for elections across the country.

He’s also the head of the UVa Center for Politics. The center, which is separate from the Politics Department, was founded in 1998 to overcome the arguable notion that politics thwarts the proper function of government.

Since 1978, Sabato’s beginning class has offered first- and second-year students a deeper look into the political world around them. The course involved two hour-long lectures each week plus sessions with one of six teaching assistants.

It also involved Sabato trying to meet with as many as possible of the up to 500 students who sign up for the class each semester, Sabato said.

“You really want to get to know as many of the students as you can, and the best way to do that is through regular office hours,” he said. “As time has gone on, that’s gotten more difficult.”

And then there was the arranging of six or seven speakers a semester.

“That’s often a difficult task because you need to set them up in advance and Charlottesville is not exactly on the beaten path,” Sabato said. “You have to go out of your way to get here.”

Sabato’s class long has been known for pulling in high-profile speakers, including three presidents, a plethora of presidential pothunters and a slew of state-level politicians, politicos and pundits.

It’s part of what made the entry-level politics course popular, even among students who didn’t like the class itself.

“The speakers that Sabato gets are great,” a student in the spring 2011 semester class wrote on www.ratemyprofessors.com, a website that allows students to anonymously praise or damn university and college courses and instructors across the country. “One midterm, one paper, and one exam [isn’t] too bad if you go to lecture and do the reading.”

Another student, this one from spring 2008, wrote: “This class was horrible. Going to class is pointless save for the visitors. Unless you plan to major, forget it.”

In keeping with the center’s goal, Sabato said speakers will continue to be invited onto Grounds.

“I will plan to bring in prominent speakers for the enjoyment of the entire university community whenever we can,” Sabato said. “In a way, the broader community will benefit from the change. We could not invite outsiders into a formal class” due to space constraints.

Sabato said his survey of 35 years’ worth of students in PLAP 101 proved a bit humbling.

“They said the two things they remember most are the motto ‘politics is a good thing’ and the guest speakers,” he said. “It shows that, as professors, we have a lot less impact than we’d like to think. But when you can bring people who have done things, who can share their experiences, the students can learn a lot and apply it in their lives.”

Still, he said, he’ll miss the class.

“I’m a melancholy and sentimental about it,” he admitted. “But you get to a point in your life where you realize life is really one long goodbye. This is one of them.”

###