Long

Long, Sarah E. "The New Student Politics: The Wingspread Statement on Civic Engagement." Second Edition. Providence, Rhode Island: Campus Compact, 2002.

The official statement-cum-manifesto of the 2001 Wingspread Summit on Student Civic Engagement, which gathered 33 undergraduate activists and volunteers to discuss civic engagement.

I: Democracy and Education
Long et al argue that statisticians have got it wrong when they only use markers like voting to measure engagement, which they feel has "multiple manifestations" including the arts (alt papers, poetry slams) and involvement with the local or the global instead of the national level. They find "conventional politics...inaccessible" and state that "service is a viable and preferable (if not superior) alternative" (1). Countering binary thinking of much of the literature, they argue that service is an "alternative politics" where they: build relationships, learn organizing skills, increase awareness, and strategize for problem solving and social change. In other words, it's a step toward more traditional politics (2). They get involved for a variety of reasons (many overlooked or not well understood) including faith-inspired reasons and special interests rooted in identity markers. Service has more potential than traditional politics of bringing voiceless into the process of decision-making. "Democracy is defined less in terms of civic obligation than of the social responsibility of the individual" (5)...Long et al want to reclaim the rhetoric of the individual and frame engagement as personal and rooted in individual and/or sub-cultural identity. But they want context too: "The realization that individual choices have larger public repercussions is an integral piece of one's moral, social, intellectual, and civic development" (6). They see service as an incremental, developmental step toward traditional politics.

They suggest that ASL programs 1) avoid making agencies or community partners feel like they're being studied or objectified, 2) orient students into the community and the work they'll be doing, 3) emphasize quality of experience over minimum numbers of hours, 4) transcend the administrative imperative to use service as good p.r. for the university, 5) "teach us the community-building/organizing skills that we need" (8), foreground reciprocity, 6) devote material resources, 7) involve students in program development and leadership, giving them a real voice in the process, 8) avoid the too-common model of higher ed where "we are encouraged to be primarily consumers of knowledge and democracy--not active producers" (12).

II: Service and Politics
Long et al develop a model of the modes of civic engagement: conventional politics, community service, and "service politics." They reject the notion that service and volunteerism is necessarily apolitical, instead seeing the service-to-politics process as a developmental one.

They define conventional politics as electoral politics and/or working with institutions like political parties and special interest groups. Community service on the other hand is no less engaged with social issues or critical understandings of social context. The latter is more desirable for many young people who "dislike the institutional focus" and have an "anti-institutional bias." They use the analogy of formal religion and say the service is imperative is like having an individual spirituality that one follows. The third mode, "service politics," "becomes the means through which students can move from community service to political engagement. Those who develop connections to larger systemic issues building on their roots in community service adopt a framework through which service politics leads to greater social change" (18). They "find contemporary political life distasteful and unresponsive to their efforts" (19). Service politics can look at root causes of social problems: "Service politics is a form of civic engagement that looks at systems, while service is typicallty geared toward symptoms" (19). Activism can be a natural outgrowth of service politics.

Some thoughts: my work with SPHB can follow this service politics model. They do the work, study context, do project-based learning, and then their research papers can be the moment of political praxis. I don't impose an agenda, but give them resources and opportunities for political awareness and consciousness and contextual understanding of social problems. Then, allow them, through their own term papers, to involve themselves in material change.

Students may be drawn to service work for affective reasons. The feel-good nature of volunteerism which avoids the agonism of activism. But perhaps faculty are drawn to activism for affective reasons--a bodily and passionate attraction-cum-romance for activism (with a twinge of nostalgia)?