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President Corrigan's ViewPointViewPoint by President Corrigan is published in First Monday for the faculty and staff at SFSU on the first Monday of the month during the fall and spring semesters by the Public Affairs and Publications offices. EXT 8-1665. pubcom@sfsu.edu |
Last week, I held a meeting with students living in the Residence Apartments and International Community to discuss water intrusion and mold there. I also informed them that the building might be closed for major repairs after commencement, with no assurance that it could reopen for the start of the fall semester.
When, in my opening faculty speech, I challenged the campus to help mount an all-out voter registration and get-out-the vote effort, I knew that the goodwill would be there, but I wondered how we could have the greatest effect, especially on our students.
You know the paradox: record levels of student volunteerism and community work paired with all-time lows in registering and voting, particularly among 18- to 24-year-olds. Students care about the world around themÑeven the world very far from them, as witness the most successful student movement we've seen in a while: efforts to force manufacturers of licensed items (those bearing university names and logos) to end sweatshop conditions in overseas workshops.
But students often don't see the political process as a vehicle for positive change. In fact, they express cynicism about the importance of the outcome, seeing major candidates as essentially the same, messages as poll and media-driven, and big money as tainting campaigns and governance.
Still, I like to think that if we knew the voting statistics for San Francisco State students, the picture would be different. The nature of this campus, the community engagement that characterizes so many of our students, and the models they have in the people with whom they work most closely hereÑour facultyÑall should make voting a natural choice.
What I've seen across campus in the last few weeks further raises my hopes. I promised to take leadership in this civic effort, but since the semester began, we've seen a growing, broad-based campaign that does this university proud. Our stalwart CFA voter registration campaign, which has made us the CSU leader in new registrations in years past, got under way a week ago, led by Eloise McQuown and Jan Gregory. With the help of Phoebe Kwan and Julianne Tolson of Computing Services, we are using technology to the fullest. I have sent all SFSU students an e-mail message urging them to register and vote and pointing them to the VOTE 2000 link on SFSU's home page for easy, online voter registration sites. (Click on VOTE 2000 or enter www.sfsu.edu/vote.)
With the encouragement of Marsha Adler, and major assistance from Will Flowers and the staff of Student Programs/Leadership Development, student organizations, including Associated Students, fraternities and sororities, Hillel and other campus groups, have wholeheartedly joined in. The Political Science Student Association and SWAVE (Student Work Advocates for Visions of Empowerment) registered hundreds of students, staff and others in September. On three days in the coming week, student groups will lead high-profile voter registration efforts in the center of campus, with entertainment and registration tables. You'll see, on Oct. 4, Associated Students; Oct. 9., Asian and Pacific Islander Association; and Oct. 10, Hillel and others.
Through Oct. 10, the Bookstore is offering a 15 percent discount to students, faculty, and staff who show a voter registration receipt.
On Oct. 4 and again closer to Election Day, the San Francisco Department of Elections will be on campus to demonstrate the new election machinery. And you can add to the individual efforts that are taking place in classrooms, hallways, officesÑanywhere members of the campus community raise the importance of voting.
Because faculty are in so many ways role models for our students, they are powerful bearers of the message.
It's terrific to know, for example, that Associate Professor Bruce Avery's English students are getting a civic bonus in class this semester. "I think our students are better than the national average [in voting], "Avery says, but since he came to SFSU, he has reminded students of the importance of exercising their franchise. What does he tell them? "That democracy has never been about one person getting what he or she wants, that it's about collective desires. That it's very popular to say all politicians are the sameÑand I used to feel that wayÑbut that I've lived under a number of different administrations, and it does make a difference. I acknowledge that they feel powerless, but I tell them that by voting they are at least beginning to take steps into the political arena, and they may go on to bigger things."
He says he always gets a laugh with his last line: "If you don't vote, you don't get to complain."
In a BECA class, Assistant Professor Hamid Khani is focusing his students on the importance of voting through an all-class assignment: developing proposals for public service announcements encouraging people to get to the polls. The class will review all proposals, then choose a dozen or so for actual production. The students are brainstorming together, developing compelling arguments, backing their ideas with research, and in the process, immersing themselves in the very civic engagement we are working to encourage.
I have no doubt that similar efforts are going on in classrooms across campus. Here, too, it takes a village, and we are that village for our students.
Signing up new voters is, however, only step one. We also need to restore our students' confidence that voting is worthwhile. One of the best ways I can think of to do this is to help them recognize the link between community service and political engagement. Right now, through service-learning classes and individual volunteerism, our students are engaged with such issues as the environment, bridging the digital divide, affordable housing, literacy, helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in school, and health care for underserved populations. From the national to the neighborhood level, these and more issues of great concern to students are at stake on Nov. 7.
We need to make the case to our students that voting is an extension of the desire to serve, a way of achieving more widespread and lasting change. As I told the Golden Gate [X]press, which is taking vigorous part in our "register and vote" campaign, we can continue to put Band-Aids on society through community service, but if we don't change laws and social policy through the people we put in office, we will keep doing the same thing over and over.
That is the message that I hope you will help to reinforce in the short but critical time that remains before Election Day.
SFSU, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
Last modified MArch 31, 2000, by Webmaster & Co.