Campus Compact

Description

This hands-on guide speaks directly to student leaders seeking to improve the effectiveness of their engaged work while enhancing their academic and civic learning. Based on three years of activity in Campus Compact's hugely successful Raise Your Voice civic action campaign, which mobilized hundreds of thousands of students across the country, this book is full of targeted strategies, tools, and activities for organizing change on campus. From holding civic dialogues to meeting with elected officials, from mapping assets and allies on campus to organizing alternative breaks, this book offers tips and step-by-step advice — from students, for students — for getting the most out of campus activity.

Edited by Richard E. Cone, Abby Kiesa, and Nicholas V. Longo.

Table of Contents

About the Editors

vii

• Introduction

  1

• Chapter 1: Lessons Learned on the Road to Student Civic Engagement

  7

• Chapter 2: Community Mapping on Campus

  45

• Chapter 3: Civic Dialogues

  55

• Chapter 4: Connecting Service and Political Engagement

  105

• Appendix

  139

Sample Chapter

Introduction

The title of the wonderful book documenting conversations between legendary community educators Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (1991) sums up the idea behind this guide: We Make the Road by Walking. During the past three years, students on hundreds of campuses in more than 30 states have been organizing to effect change through Raise Your Voice, a nonpartisan, student-led civic initiative sponsored by Campus Compact and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This guide gathers some of the lessons and tools from the road these student leaders have paved through their efforts to make campuses more free and democratic spaces. It is meant for students who want to be change agents on campus and in their communities. It provides advice for experienced student organizers looking for inspiration as well as ideas for students who may be active in community service but are looking for ways to connect service with broader social change.

The lessons and tools in this guide come directly from Raise Your Voice student leaders who have organized to give their peers more effective voices and power for addressing urgent public issues such as hunger, homelessness, educational reform, and the lack of young people in the political system. Included are a range of conceptual frameworks they developed, with new approaches to politics, community service,and higher education in support of student civic engagement. Also included are practical, user-friendly tools for effecting social change on campus and in the community.

The Problem: Disengaged Students and Campuses

In 1977, in an address at Douglass College, poet and activist Adrienne Rich declared: "The first thing I want to say to you who are students is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one."

After almost 30 years,the idea of claiming your education has become even more important as more colleges and universities treat students as passive consumers, rather than producers of their education. The student as customer is part of a broader societal trend. For example, students today report that "being well off financially" is far more important than "developing a meaningful philosophy of life, "according to a recent survey of incoming college students conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA (HERI, 2003). The survey shows that these goals have reversed during the past 40 years.

College students are by no means the me-focused youths often stereotyped in the media?they are, for example, volunteering in record numbers — but while they are giving freely of their time on an individual basis, they are less inclined to participate in civic or political affairs, at least as these activities are typically measured (see the sidebar on p. 3 for some statistics). Although HERI has found that students' political awareness has increased somewhat since its nadir in 2000, in 2003 still only a third of students said that "keeping up to date with political affairs" was very important. Every significant indicator of political engagement has fallen by at least half during the three decades in which the HERI has conducted its survey.

In many ways, higher education mirrors this disengagement with public issues. Colleges and universities are often seen as isolated bubbles that have little to do with local communities or broader public issues. They are organized as a series of quasi-independent boxes or silos that discourage collaboration, cooperation, or collegial action. As they become more privatized, they have less public support. Tuition at public and private colleges and universities continues to rise,and public funding for higher education continues to fall. In short,colleges and universities are often disengaged from solving the most important public problems, at a time when the public sees less need to support them.

The Solution: Organizing for Change

Many student leaders reject the notion of today's college students as "apathetic." More students are volunteering in communities now than in any previous generation. Many of these students combine service with activism; they are creating a new, more expansive, robust, and relational politics that is not measured by conventional indicators of engagement. They are talking about issues with their peers, buying socially responsible products, and demanding that large institutions (including their own colleges and universities) support their efforts to make the world a better place.

In the Raise Your Voice campaign during the past three years, student leaders have conducted asset-mapping projects on hundreds of campuses; led public dialogues on issues such as housing, child care, and the war in Iraq; engaged in campus strategic planning; met with their state legislators in more than a dozen states; and connected service and politics through projects such as alternative spring breaks to Washington, DC. Each example confirms that democracy is something best learned through the practical application of everyday politics and thoughtful strategic planning by being an active and reflective member of a community.

Student leaders are also helping to change the culture on campuses across the country. They are demanding that colleges and universities offer students the opportunity for democratic action through involvement in their community, support for political change, and opportunities to have a say in the curriculum. They are demanding to have a real voice, both on campus issues and on issues of broader impact.

The key question is this: How can you influence a huge institution like a college or university to organize for democratic and social change? We who have been a part of Raise Your Voice know that while students may not have powerful roles on all campuses, it is possible to influence organizations whose very longevity is testament to their resistance to change. We have a unique role to play on campus and in society. We can ask the difficult questions, experiment with innovative solutions, and bring fresh perspectives to divisive problems. Every campus is different, but if you are smart, strategic, and collaborative, you can develop an inclusive process that encourages the dialogue necessary for building long-term commitment. This guide offers many tools to help you get started.

Using This Book

The guide is divided into four chapters and an appendix. In Chapter 1, students reflect on lessons learned through their experiences as civic engagement leaders with Raise Your Voice. They overwhelmingly point to the need for institutions to provide direct support — in the form of financial, physical, and mentoring resources — for students' efforts to engage their peers. Chapter 1 also offers key strategies for overcoming barriers to student engagement, as well as the conceptual and definitional grounding for a new student politics on campus.

The next three chapters contain practical applications for making change happen on your campus. These chapters will help you have an effective, powerful voice on campus and community issues by becoming an effective organizer and facilitator of change.

Raise Your Voice students have learned that in order for students to be effective agents of campus change,they must be deliberate and strategic by using a method called "community mapping," described in Chapter 2. The chapter has a guide for finding stakeholders, allies, and resources on campus and working collaboratively with these stakeholders on the issues you care most about.

Raise Your Voice students have also learned that effective organizing requires reflection and consensus building. Chapter 3 contains a step-by-step guide to facilitating dialogues, creating public forums and learning circles, and having deliberative conversations among peers, faculty, staff, and administrators. The guide has everything you need for implementing successful dialogues on campus, including examples of topics, formats, and facilitation and evaluation techniques, as well as sample dialogues.

As noted earlier, today's students are far from apathetic, but that they are more likely to perform direct service than other forms of civic engagement. Chapter 4 offers data,tools,and ideas for connecting direct service and the political system. It also has advice on becoming politically engaged and provides models for successfully connecting service and politics on campus. The appendix offers a train-the-trainer guide for student leaders,campus staff and faculty, and community partners. This final section includes both sample trainings and agendas.

This guide is not meant to be read cover to cover. It is a resource with targeted information for students who want to change the world, starting with their own campus. As we pass on the lessons from our efforts to make change,we hope it will inspire creative,innovative activism on college campuses.

Dick Cone
Abby Kiesa
Nick Longo

References

Higher Education Research Institute. (2003). The American freshman: National norms for fall 2003. Los Angeles: University of California.

Horton, M., & Freire, P.(1991). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Introduction