The Impossible Will Take a Little While

Soul of a Citizen

Lectures

Buy Loeb's Books

Pass the Word

Receive Loeb's Articles
by email

About Paul Loeb
· Paul Loeb's Other Books
· Paul Loeb Bio
· Paul Loeb's Web Links

Engaging students as Volunteers and Voters
By Paul Rogat Loeb

What if colleges could register students as voters, help them educate themselves on the issues, and encourage them to volunteer in the campaigns of their preferred candidates?  If they could register as many of America's 17 million students as are eligible, and engage as many as they can to volunteer in the electoral campaigns, it would make a huge impact, both on the coming election and on the lives of the students who participate.

As I describe below, two excellent higher education projects offer resources to get students engaged in precisely this way: the 2008 Campus Vote Initiative and Your Vote, Your Voice.Together, these sites offer all the resources anyone needs to fully engage their school in a full-scale non-partisan involvement effort. But neither budgeted staff time for follow-up. And without this person-to-person follow up, all their good work risks getting ignored, because people won't necessarily know about their resources to act on them.

To fill this gap, I'm doing a couple of things. First I’m hoping anyone on a campus will fill out the campus vote map I created so I can connect you with other people at you school, and with the national campus engagement efforts. Please fill out the map even we corresponded recently because it's a key part of how I'll link people together.

Together with my assistant, Dr Erica Kay, I've creatd a checklist drawing together engagement resources from both the 2008 Campus Vote Initiative and Your Vote, Your Voice. Schools have already said it's enormously useful and you can access it here. I've created a Campus Election volunteer guide, to tell you how to organize on your campus, and schools are finding it similarly useful..

I’m also consulting with Campus Compact's state offices to help them do the necessary nonpartisan outreach, building on their national initiative. Those I've spoken with are totally excited about participating, but because they haven't previously budgeted for this, they're going to need extra outside funding to hire the necessary staff. I'm trying to raise money so selected Compact offices can hire additional people to work directly with their member campuses and ensure they do all they can to engage their students. I'll be donating 10,000 from my lecture earnings to do this (if I net $60,000 instead of $70,000 this year, it's worth it), and will spend the bulk of the next couple months trying to raise tax deductible donations from every source I can find. Even modest donations, and you can give online through the main national non-profit portal, NetworkForGood

I'm also trying to find people who could volunteer in doing these critical follow-ups in the states that have the most competitive races, and where student actions and votes will clearly make a difference, who ever they choose to support. In some cases, faculty and staff are volunteering by phone and email in other states than the ones where htey live.. I hope you can participate in this too.

Here are the ways you can help, with more details below.

• Fill out the campus-involvement form with your name, school, contact info, and what you can do on your campus.
• Then use the checklist to engage your campus
• Pass this website onl to friends and colleagues who work in higher education and have them enter the information in the form so I can connect them with other interested people at their schools.
• If you have significant time to volunteer and are comfortable navigating college bureaucracies get back to me directly with a sense of your background and how much time you have to contribute. I'll then plug you into one of the key Campus Compact networks, and you can help them ensure the campuses in their state plug into the national efforts.  (You'd be doing this by phone and email, so could do it from wherever you live).
• Contribute financially to this project, complementing the money I'll be personally donating, and the money I'm working to raise.  Because the campus voter engagement efforts are nonpartisan, all donations are tax deductible. If one hundred people came up with $100 each, we could fund an additional state.
• Get your school to help support these efforts, by allocating service learning staff to help coordinate, or by offering stipends to students to help them reach out to other campuses.

Here's more information on the project's context and how you can help.

Engaging Students as Voters and Volunteers
When citizens start voting and volunteering at a young age, these habits tend to stick. And in this election, student votes and student volunteering will matter, whoever they support. If we build on their newfound passion and concern, their involvement could have a major impact on the election while also setting them on what could be a lifetime path of engagement.

As mentioned, Campus Compact, has created a wonderful resource to help schools get engaged, the 2008 Campus Vote Initiative.  Along with Your Vote, Your Voice, this initiative encourages colleges and universities to register students to vote as they participate in orientation programs, sign up and attend classes, receive paychecks from student loans or campus jobs, and pursue other co-curricular activities.  It also offers ways to help students reflect on the pivotal choices they'll be making, including structured days of campus-wide discussion. Finally, it offers powerful examples of ways colleges can help students volunteer with their favored candidates, or participate in related projects, like a leadership class at Ohio's Baldwin Wallace College that registered 700 eligible inmates in the Cleveland jails in 2004. Given sufficient institutional support, these kinds of efforts could make a tremendous difference, including by helping students engage their non-college peers, who historically vote at far lower rates.

But neither initiative has budgeted for the kind of personal follow-ups that are essential if we want to get the vast majority of America's campuses seriously involving their students in the election.  As a result, their good work risks having far less impact than it might, because only through these direct follow-ups will the maximum number of schools be likely to take the available national resources and seriously run with them.

After extensive conversations, I've come up with an effective solution. With Campus Compact offices in almost every key state, they're in an ideal position to hire staffers or enlist volunteers to do these more personal follow-ups.  I've worked with Compact's state offices for years and can't imagine a more effective network, or one whose judgment I'd trust more on finding the right individuals for this task.

So I'm proceeding on several simultaneous fronts:

I'm hoping to get as many faculty, staff and administrators as possible signing up to help engage their individual schools, using the resources on the national websites.  If you can do that, and enlist others by passing on this email, it would make a major difference.

I'm also looking for people who have more time, and might be willing to volunteer (including by phone and email) with local Compact offices in the states with the most contested elections, and thefore the most potential to get students involved, whatever their political affiliations. They'd be doing the kinds of intensive person-to-person follow-ups that will be necessary to get individual campuses involved and taking advantage of all the available election engagement resources If you have time to help and are comfortable navigating academic bureaucracies (or know anyone else who is), I'd love to connect you with the efforts in your state, or if you're not in a competitive state, then efforts in states that are. If you're interested you can get back to me directly with a sense of your relevant background and a rough sense of how much time you'd be able to commit, either over the summer, or between now and the election.  I'll then hook you up with one of the key Campus Compact offices, and you can work together with them to do follow-ups with their member schools.

My other approach is to raise tax deductible donations so Campus Compact offices in selected states to help with the follow-up. (Campus voter involvement efforts will of course be nonpartisan, as is appropriate for educational institutions. This also lets the donations be tax deductible).

The staffers they hire could be energetic graduate students. Or people like just-graduated University of Akron student body president Kyle Bohland, who's worked with Ohio Campus Compact since freshman year, served on their statewide board, and revived Ohio's statewide Student Association after a lengthy dormancy. The head of Ohio Campus Compact, who recommended him, thinks he's one of the most promising young leaders he's seen in years, and Kyle had already been talking with him about getting involved in exactly these kinds of efforts.  I've now made a tentative commitment to hire him full-time because Ohio is so key, and he has equally skilled and enthusiastic counterparts throughout the country. Whoever the state offices enlist, they'd approach colleges and universities throughout their state networks to ensure they know about the excellent engagement resources now available, and help them participate as comprehensively as possible. 

I'm also hoping that individual schools may be able to support this effort, whether by contributing extra to their local state compacts, or by making work/study resources available, like stipends for grad students (or skilled and motivated undergraduates) to help organize their campuses and enlist other schools.

Because Compact's state affiliates work regularly with schools in their area, they already know the best people to approach, whether sympathetic college presidents, campus service learning directors, or student affairs coordinators.  Knowing the culture of each campus, they can determine which schools will run with the campaigns on their own and which will need an additional push.  Since their offices are all based at colleges or universities, they have ready access to people who'd be an excellent fit for the job.

The Campus Compact state directors I've spoken with love this idea. Their budgets don't allow them to hire additional staff with their own existing resources. But the state directors would love to coordinate if I could just come up with the necessary funds to hire or find the people they need.  So I decided to initiate this project (without pay), and even contribute $10,000 out of my own funds.

Given the magnitude of the potential impact, the money required to do this is modest.  It will take just $20,000, including all related expenses, to hire the poised-and-ready former University of Akron student body president to work full-time from now to the election making sure that Ohio campuses engage their students. If we can come up with the funds to keep him working the entire time, it will make a major difference getting the state's campuses involved in engaging the 640,000 students in the states.  I'm actually hoping to raise enough to fund positions in as many as fourteen key states, with several positions in each of the largest and most competitive. Campus Compact's state offices will cover miscellaneous overhead. I'm investing three months of my time (an in-kind contribution of roughly $15,000), and the previously mentioned $10,000. Combined with other election-related contributions I've made, this will be over half of my discretionary income, but the project seems is that important. All money raised will go directly to the people we hire. If I could get 100 people giving $100, we'd be able to reach another key state. And if I could get 15 or 20 people giving $500-1,000, we could cover one or two more.

Right now, I'm spending the bulk of my time approaching every appropriate foundation or major donor that I can think of. For most, their lead times are simply too long, which also knocks out most of the foundations currently supporting the national projects. But I'll go as far as I can with whatever resources I raise, which is why I'm hoping that you and the other people on my list might be able to help. 

If you have no discretionary money, I hope you'll still be able to make a difference by working to engage your campus or volunteering in the campaigns. But if you are able to help, you can either donate online to my tax deductible 501 (c) 3 fiscal sponsor, Illinois Campus Compact, or make out a check out to them and send it to my Seattle address below, so I can keep track. If you're able to give a larger amount and have further questions (or know potential major funders), just email me at the address below.

I hope you can help in one way or another. It feels that important to ensure that this opportunity doesn't get missed due to overloaded email inboxes and lack of personal follow-up.

Thanks
Paul Loeb
You can email Paul Loeb here

I've enclosed a budget and a longer and more detailed analysis of youth electoral involvement, the historical promise of the current political moment, and the specifics of the existing campus election-engagement initiatives. Illinois Campus Compact is donating their overhead to oversee this project, while passing the money to the more competitive states that we'll fund.

State Compact Voter Engagement Project Budget

This wholly incremental budget can be funded at any level. As of August 1st It will take about $6,500 to add a half-time person between now and the election, including expenses like cell phone minutes, materials,and the costs of driving to the various schools.And $13,000 for a full-time staffer, like the wonderful former University of Akron student body president we ehired in Ohio. I'd love to add people in as many states as possible, focusing in particular on those whose competitive races will allow students to realize how much their voice and actions can count..  If you'd like to specify a particular state for your contributions, I will try to honor them (and will definitely honor them if you're able to fund an entire position). Otherwise, I'll look at whatever amount we raise, and apply it for the maximum possible impact.

We've already started with a wonderful staffer in Ohio, and I'm also talking with Campus Compact staffers in Colorado and North Carolina. I see this as a tremendously important pilot project, both for now and in the future, and will add more states as resources permit.

Administration and overhead is being donated by Illinois Campus Compact. I'm donating all of my time, as well as $10,000 of my own.

This is a more detailed analysis of the historical opportunity and specific ways schools can get involved
Colleges, Voter Registration, and a Historic Opportunity
By Paul Rogat Loeb

Permanent link to this page in case the links drop out in plain text:   www.paulloeb.org/articles/collegevoter2008.htm

What would be the impact if America's campuses got as many of their 17 million enrolled students as possible registered to vote and participating in the fall campaigns? My sense, from recent youth voting patterns, is that it would make a major difference.

Commentators have been bemoaning students' political detachment for years—the separation of far too many from critical public issues. New institutions have emerged to address this, from the national higher education service learning network Campus Compact to Rock the Vote and the New Voters Project of the PIRGs. But students kept saying their actions didn't matter. Many believed that the electoral sphere was so inevitably corrupt that their participation made no sense.

This election feels different, as young voters and volunteers are surging into campaigns in numbers we haven't seen in decades.  They've gradually been getting in electoral politics for some time. From 2000 to 2004, turnout by 18 to 29 year olds jumped from 40% to 49%, and from 36% to 47% among 18 to 24-year-olds. In 2006, youth turnout rose by another 3%, more than any other segment of the electorate, and young voters made the key difference in countless House races and half the Senate seats that changed hands. So this seems like a moment of huge possibility.

But students still vote considerably less than older groups, and campuses can play a key role in getting them involved, including in ways that will also help engage their non-college peers.  When citizens start voting and volunteering at a young age, these habits tend to stick. And in this election, it is clear that their vote and volunteering will matter, whoever they support. Their interest now is even greater. The question is whether we'll give them the tools they need to act in a way that will make the greatest possible impact.

When citizens start voting and volunteering at a young age, these habits tend to stick. So if we build on their newfound passion and concern, we could help set them on a path of engagement for the rest of their lives. Given the persistent gap between potential and actual student voting, the more they participate, the greater difference it will also make in November's electoral outcomes—and therefore in the fundamental direction of our country.

REGISTRATION AND ENGAGEMENT
To vote, however, students need to be registered, and many aren't. They often don't realize they need to register until the peak of the fall campaign season, when in most states it's too late. When they can't vote, that also diminishes their participation in other ways, like volunteering or talking about the election with others.

The Compact initiative and that of Your Vote, Your Voice offer a wonderful range of ways to remedy this situation, based on interviews with successful voter registration programs at widely differing campuses. From all the available research, it's clear that campus voter registration drives succeed best when administrators and faculty create widely available opportunities for students to participate, then work with student organizations to help promote them. But because neither national coalition has budgeted money for direct staff outreach. their efforts risk having far less impact than they otherwise might, which is why we're working through the state Compacts.

To first goal of both is for colleges and universities across the country to register students to vote as their students register for fall 2008 classes, participate in orientation programs, take courses, work at campus jobs, and pursue co-curricular activities.  The two websites offer a wonderful range of ways to do this, based on interviews with successful voter registration programs at widely differing campuses. They suggest a variety of concurrent approaches including offering voter registration forms as part of the regular sign-up process for classes, distributing them in conjunction with student loan and work-study disbursements, giving to professors to hand out in their courses, and setting up registration drives in the residence halls and at athletic events.

Colleges can include voter registration forms as part of the regular sign-up process for classes, integrating them in particular with on-line registration. Since many students will have already completed this process this spring, schools can add in other approaches, like encouraging faculty in every possible department to distribute registration forms in their courses and to talk briefly about the importance of electoral participation. Schools can also set up registration tables in the student union and at athletic events, run door-to-door drives in the residence halls, and distribute registration forms in conjunction with student loan and work-study disbursements. RockTheVote is also interested in working with already scheduled campus concerts to let them use their brand and registration technologies, enabling students and others to register in the process of buying tickets online or lining up at the gates. Elon University even recently brought together the College Republicans and College Democrats in a combined campaign to sign up every eligible student on campus..

Election-Related Reflection
With comprehensive voter registration programs in place, campuses can then work on two other engagement approaches that could have a major impact: getting their students thinking critically about the choices they'll now be eligible to make; and getting them engaged as volunteers with whatever campaigns they decide to support. Given major crises from global climate change to the Iraq war, an uncertain economy, and the escalating costs of higher education, students need to understand where the candidates stand on these critical issues and others, so they can decide which best reflect their own beliefs.

The Campus Compact site presents examples of successful approaches. Campuses can facilitate the reflective process by encouraging faculty to weave election-related themes into their courses throughout the fall, and to participate in specific programs like the DebateWatch project of the National Communication Association (NCA) and the American Political Science Association. (DebateWatch is still setting up their website, but this article details their previous efforts). Campuses could also set aside days close to the election for faculty across the curriculum to discuss relevant issues in their classes, to hold discussions in the dorms, and for student organizations to conduct related campus events.  The goal would be to get every student to recognize how profoundly this election could affect their individual and common futures, and then help them make informed choices at the polls.

Election Volunteering as a Model of Civic Engagement
We can do even more than helping students vote--and vote thoughtfully. We can also encourage them to volunteer with whichever national or local candidates they choose to support, with whatever partisan allegiances. That means making sure that each student has information on how to participate in the campaigns of their preferred candidates, whether Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green, or another party. We can encourage our students to knock on doors, make phone calls (including participating in the remote calling programs where voters in areas without competitive races call those in states with ones that are), and initiate conversations that offer their fellow citizens an opportunity to engage with critical issues beyond 30-second attack ads and 1-minute TV sound bites. In 2004, for instance, students in Baldwin Wallace College's Brain Leadership program registered 700 prisoners in the Cleveland jail who were eligible to vote.

Once students begin to volunteer in these election-related efforts, they're far more likely to remain similarly involved throughout their lives. This is also a way to amplify their voices, as they reach out to others, both on campus and off. 

Campuses can integrate these kinds of involvement into existing service-learning and civic-engagement programs. After students volunteer with the campaigns of their choice, they could then return to their classrooms, reflect on what they've learned, and share experiences with their peers, including with students volunteering for opposing candidates. These kinds of involvement can also connect them with role models of engaged community members. There's nothing like working side-by-side with an 83-year-old volunteer to teach a 21-year-old about keeping on for the long haul.

If we promote these efforts well enough, they can shift the electoral landscape. I once met a Wesleyan student who registered 300 voters on her 3,000-person campus, and educated them on the candidates' respective stands on the environment and access to education. The Congressman she supported ended up winning by 27 votes. This young woman almost didn't act "because I didn't think of myself as a political person, plus I'm kind of shy." But the issues impelled her to take the psychological risk. Had she not, the district would have elected a different representative.

STRENGTHS AND LIMITS OF THE CURRENT INITIATIVES
We're now in a historic moment where students are clamoring to get involved, on a level unprecedented in decades. But how many end up participating will depend on the structures their colleges create to involve them.

Thanks to the two national websites, the resources are now available for any school in the country to use Campus Compact's or Your Vote, Your Voice's wonderful examples and templates to launch any or all of these efforts.  Both sites include voter registration and absentee ballot forms, and examples of innovative registration programs. The Campus Compact site also includes suggestions on voter education activities and on integrating election-year efforts with existing community service projects. Your Vote, Your Voice has a particularly useful handbook that you can print out on how to build campus voter-engagement coalitions. Looking at successful recent campus engagement projects, it's clear that these efforts work best when schools create committee to divide up all the necessary tasks, with a single contact person or office as the hub.
But the current national initiatives also risk falling short. For all that they offer every conceivable resource to help campuses engage their students in this election, neither budgeted for significant staff follow up. So no one will be calling individual campuses to make sure they participate, and participate as fully and most effectively as possible. These kinds of person-to-person approaches are what got 1900 campuses involved, for instance, in the major campus global warming teach-ins, Focus the Nation. For all that email outreach can reach vast numbers of people, for projects this critical you need more intimate follow-ups. Otherwise we risk most schools giving the national initiatives just cursory attention.

In an ideal world, the two initiatives would be funded for comprehensive staff follow-ups. Because they aren't, they won't be able to do the person-to-person outreach that's key to get campuses in their networks as fully engaged as possible. And at this point, their major institutional funders operate on too long a time-line to come up with additional support. Add in that Campus Compact's national office is preparing for a major move from Providence to Boston, and much as I'd like to think that the national groups will suddenly come up with new resources, at this it point it looks doubtful. As a result, I fear that many schools will simply fall through the cracks in terms of participation. 

If this is true, we'll end up with plenty of campuses that do a wonderful job, registering and engaging the bulk of their students. But many others will simply put out some registration forms, circulate some announcements, and assume that they've done all that's necessary. And some won't get involved at all.  That will leave far too many students on the sidelines.

STATE CAMPUS COMPACTS--THE LOCAL ALTERNATIVE
There is an excellent alternative, however. As mentioned, the state Campus Compcat directors would love to hire energetic graduate students or other temporary staffers to help them do local follow-ups, complementing the national campaigns with direct personal outreach. 

I've worked with local Compact affiliates for years and marveled at the quality of people they've drawn into their network. So I'd trust them immensely on finding exactly the right individuals to hire for this task. Because work regularly with most of the campuses in their states, so already know the best people to approach, whether campus service learning directors, sympathetic college presidents, or the coordinators of student activities.  They also know the culture of these campuses, so know which schools will run with the campaigns on their own and which will need an additional push.  They know local voter registration procedures, so can help schools steer their students through their bureaucratic mazes.  And because they're located on college campuses, they have access to an easy pool of potential additional staffers.

The people they enlist would contact each campus in their state, make sure that they're participating, and follow-up on their progress, using a check-list from the national website. If no effort was happening, they'd have readily available networks that they could use to begin one. If the school had started something but was missing key aspects or participants, they'd do their best to help them follow through, using suggestions collected by the national initiatives from successful previous efforts. They'd be perfectly situated to help the national efforts realize their full potential.

Because the state offices don't have surplus resources in their existent budgets, the funds are going to have to come from outside. The costs of this effort are extremely modest, roughly $9,000 for each half-time person hired between now and the election.  Working the entire summer and early fall, even a single part-timer person could make a major difference in a state that could help decide America's futrure. For $200,000, or less than what the presidential campaigns will be spending in a single average day, we could help the state Compacts intensively cover 17 states, allocating two or three people to some of them. Even at $45,000, such an effort would still fund five half-time people and spread the effort to several different states.

The other approach is to find skilled volunteers and then plug them into the state networks. I'm thinking about people who are comfortable working with academic bureaucracies, but might have some time, like college faculty or staff who are retired, on sabbatical, or summer vacation. If you're willing to do national or regional outreach beyond your individual campus, or to engage any major higher education organizations, please respond with a sense of your relevant experience (if I don't already know you), what you might be able to do, and how much time and energy you think you could invest. We can correspond or talk further as necessary, and I can then pass on your information to the efforts in key states.

Of course students aren't the only young voters who'll need help to get engaged in this election. The off-campus efforts of groups like Project Vote, America Votes, the PIRGs, League of Young Voters, and RockTheVote are critical, since non-college youth historically vote far lower.  But we have no excuse for not involving our students They're gathered together on their campuses, and because their schools all have the structures to register and help them get engaged if they simply follow the templates and approaches suggested by the national campaigns. And if schools do get them engaged in election volunteering and not just voting, they can help get many other historically underrepresented constituencies to the polls. The national projects have provided some first-rate tools. But they've stopped just short of the goal line by not allocating resources for person-to-person follow through. 

I'm asking for your help to close that last remaining gap. Given the impact of this election on the future our students will inherit, we owe it to them to do everything we can to encourage them to claim the power of their voice and their actions, while respecting the wide variety of political views on campus. The students would make their particular commitments and choices on their own. But we'd be giving them a powerful opportunity to make their choices matter, and possibly take the first steps toward becoming engaged citizens for the rest of their lives. Given recent trends, if we offer them the relevant opportunities, students are likely to respond. If we believe civic education and engagement are part of our mission, there's no better time than now to rise to that challenge

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, and Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy & Action of the American Campus. His 2002 talk to the American Association of State Colleges & Universities inspired that association’s 200-campus American Democracy Project. See www.paulloeb.org 

PS—If you've read through all this, I greatly appreciate it. And remember, do fill out the web form, so I can connect you with other interested people at your school and nationwide. And if you can possibly contribute financially it could make a major difference.