Campus Compact, with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts, is undertaking a two-year student civic campaign, The National Student Civic Engagement Campaign: Students Rebuilding the Democracy. The disengagement of young Americans from public life has serious implications for their ability to address public issues effectively and for the future of democratic politics. Increasing the civic engagement of students is at the core of Campus Compact’s mission, which focuses on “the civic purposes of higher education.” Through this initiative Campus Compact will call upon the talents and energies of students to participate in the renewal of American democracy.


BACKGROUND
Higher education has an important role to play in securing a strong American democracy. In 1916 the educational philosopher John Dewey wrote that “democracy needs to be reborn in each generation and education is its midwife.” In 21st-century America, the challenge of bringing new life to American democracy may be the most important issue facing the nation. Alarm about the decline in civic participation has been sounded by eminent sociologists, political scientists, and government and non-profit leaders, among them Robert Putnam, Benjamin Barber, Cornel West, Robert Bellah, John Gardner, Harry Boyte, Amitai Etzioni, Michael X. Delli Carpini, and Jean Elshstain. While these leaders focus on different aspects of civic life, they share an overall concern that, in the words of the Nunn /Bennett Commission report, we have become a “nation of spectators.” We have distanced ourselves from our civic responsibilities. Visions of the rebirth of democracy are particularly concerned with the participation of young people in the democratic process. Many perceive that young Americans are cynical, alienated from conventional politics, and disengaged from national political systems. It has been a long-standing goal of American higher education to develop well-informed and critically thinking citizens. The challenge is to harness the power of the civic mission of higher education to educate the next generation of active citizens.

This generation of students is more involved in public and community service than has been true for decades. Indeed, students are not passive or disengaged. They have an active interest in global equity and in local community-development issues. They have an extraordinary sensitivity to multicultural issues and the importance of learning how to work with those different from themselves. Those who are privileged are uncomfortable with that privilege, and many students actively seek to improve the conditions of others. Exceptional student leaders have articulated a new era of “service politics,” that is, not service as an alternative to politics, but service as an alternative politics, a way to build the skills to change public policy (see The New Student Politics). It is upon these efforts that this project seeks to build.

VISION
By the end of the two-year grant, well over a hundred thousand students will have experienced civic engagement as a fundamental part of their education, and, for many, that experience will shape their lives as citizens. Moreover, the resources and atmosphere on hundreds of university and college campuses will reflect a new emphasis on democratic renewal.

The National Student Civic Engagement Campaign has three overarching objectives:

• Increase college student involvement in public life and connect these actions with a larger national student movement around civic engagement that reaches an estimated 1 in 10 college students on at least 650 campuses;

• Document and highlight student civic engagement activities and issues that are important to college students; and

• Mobilize higher education in a way that gives more voice to students and makes civic engagement central to student learning.


ACTIVITIES
The Student Civic Engagement Campaign will be launched in the fall of 2002 on campuses around the country. The Student Civic Engagement Campaign will have national, state, and campus-based activities that focus on increasing students participation in public life, documenting and telling the story of the positive role youth play in solving public problems, and mobilizing higher education to encourage civic engagement. Activities in the campaign include: a national student summit on student civic engagement for student organizations; campus, regional, and statewide dialogues on civic engagement; campus-based mapping of civic engagement opportunities, Student Public Statements on issues that are important to them with maximum visibility, and a policy summit in Washington, DC on student civic engagement.


CONTACT
For more information or to find out how you can get involved, go to the campaign website at www.actionforchange.org or contact Nick Longo, National Student Coordinator, nlongo@compact.org.