college

Totally bumped by Sarah Burris (Ian is such a rockstar!)

The first three days at the College Democrats of America convention in Denver this weekend were enjoyable and informative, but also a clear reminder of CDA's shortcomings. Many of the trainings they offered were excellent, but the question then becomes to what degree will students actually use these skills as they head back to campus this fall? Is CDA ready to become an organization focused on effecting real change or is it still dominated by students who would rather pad their resumes than roll up their sleeves and engage in serious campaigning?

After talking with convention delegates who have been long time CDA members at the chapter and state level, I heard various frustrations that many students have with the organization - frustrations which rarely rise to the surface to be discussed by CDA leadership.

The overriding grievance was that CDA remains a mostly marginalized and underfunded part of the Democratic party, due to the fact that it is still part of the DNC. Leaders of state federations also complained that the national CDA leadership provides no money and very few resources to the states. States would like financial support, speakers for events, support for field programs, increased coordination with boarding states, and other resources that the national leadership has not provided. Another disappointment was the fact that most national CDA leadership positions were uncontested during the elections. Even elections that were contested were largely determined ahead of time by candidates who had already lined up the right key endorsements.

On Saturday, the elections for CDA President and Vice President took place. Katie Naranjo and Alec Schierenbeck ran unopposed to succeed Lauren Wolf and Awais Khaleel for the top two national posts. Alec's speech was well received, but focused entirely on national issues important to all Democrats and made no mention of any plans of his for CDA. Katie's speech was more substantive and promised a series of encouraging improvements. She told delegates "we're here to make a change," and that vowed to make students "a valued constituency." We'll have to wait and see whether or not these pledges for action materialize in the coming years.

Sunday ended on a high note with an incredible speech by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who told the story of how he became Mayor and tied it into a broader vision. Booker spoke against excessive individualism and described unity and community as core American values. Afterwards he received a standing ovation from the entire CDA convention. Sam Hodge, CDA Political Affairs Director, came on stage and called it the best political speech he had heard.

From www.juniorpolitics.com

I remember having a conversation months ago with someone on politics in general. I don't remember the exact topic, but it had to do with current events, and eventually also Iraq. In any case, she was mentioning how her parents knew a certain Republican official, and that if he ran for president, her parents would vote for him. And so would she. Naturally, I ask her why. And she can't tell me.

We start to discuss other issues. I bring out all sorts of reasons as to why the Iraq war has nothing to do with terrorism in and of itself. She can't counter any of my arguments, as she has no arguments of her own to make. Does this mean she believes in the Iraq war due to false misconceptions and a blind backing of her family? Of course. I'm not saying don't support your family on issues. But come on, even I would want a reason as to why my family thinks a certain way, and if I have to defend that reasoning, I would definitely want to be prepared for it.

I can't stand ignorance. There are people all over the United States who vote for the red candidate just because he's republican or the blue candidate just because he or she (let's face it, when I see a woman running for president on the republican ticket, I'll correct the other side's pronoun) is a democrat. Even if you yourself belong to a particular party, that does not mean you can opt out of knowing why you're voting for that particular side. Yes, belonging to a party and voting for that party's candidate means you are voting for a certain set of values the party always brings with it. But, not all candidates are alike. No one can ever convince me of that. Politics does not produce robots (although some politicians do seem that way). I had better get a clear answer to why you support or do not support a particular candidate, or I do not want you voting.

That brings me to another complaint of mine, not voting. Some who are ignorant choose not to vote. My solution? Read up and vote. Don't just stay ignorant. You have no right to complain about the current state of affairs in America if you never vote. You've basically forfeited your opinion when you do, and you have left your fate in the hands of the rest of the American public. I, for one, could never do that. Quite simply I don't trust anyone else in making the correct decision. I could never give up that kind of control. There are those of you who say it's pointless anyway, and that your vote doesn't really matter. Well, let's see what happens if 200 million people in America choose not to vote on election day. Let's see how much our opinions really don't matter...

Not voting also happens with those who are incredibly opinionated. I'm talking about my generation of course. Those who talk the talk on college campuses and don't actually take their opinions to the polls. This I feel is incredibly hypocritical. As far as I'm concerned, you're not allowed to have any sort of opinion at all if you let America decide its fate for itself. It's like complaining about a current state of affairs and not doing anything about it. It's like complaining that your house is messy and yet you do not bother to clean it. It's like... well I'll stop there. I think everyone gets the point.

So here are some of my suggestions. If you don't know anything about what's going on at all in American politics, learn. Don't spew out some crap that it's not important or pointless, because that's only true with that sort of mindset. If you don't vote, vote. If you have any sort of opinion at all, learn what the other side has to say about the issue, make up your mind, and then go to the polls. Otherwise, I don't want to hear any complaining, and I certainly don't want to hear what you think, because if you don't think it's important enough of an opinion to vote on it, then neither do I.

The youth voters have a lot to bring onto the table, and we could have just as big a voice as any other age group in America. The politics of today will affect us for years and years to come, isn't it about time we do something about it?

Over at The New Republic, Elizabeth Cline wants to know why young women aren't voting for Sen. Clinton. Her answer seems to be twofold. First, non-college young people, who tend to favor Clinton, are not turning out in numbers as high as their college peers. Second, and more importantly, young women in college are living in a meritorcratic system with little to no gender bias, effectively neutering gender as a deciding factor in their politics:

Obama's support gets even stronger as voters get younger. Among college students, it's even stronger. As far back as April 2007, polls showed Obama with a 17-point lead over Clinton among college Democrats. During that same period, Obama's lead over Clinton was only three percentage points among 18-24 year-olds not enrolled in a four-year school. Fortunately for Obama, this non-college group has abysmal voter turnout. According to CIRCLE, in 2004, the voter turnout for college students and college graduates under 25 was 59 percent; it was 34 percent for non-graduates. In other words, those young voters are mostly college students or recent grads.

Anyone who has graduated in the last decade has anecdotes of guys who come to class late or hungover, while their female classmates seemed to have all their work done. College has become one corner of American life where hardworking females are consistently and fairly rewarded, and they are succeeding there, to a much greater degree than their male counterparts. It's possible, maybe even likely, to graduate college with little sense and zero experience of institutionalized gender discrimination--with almost complete freedom from the type of covert, daily setbacks that drive blacks to the polls for Obama and older women to vote for Clinton.

I don't know if it is true or not, but it is certainly an interesting theory.

A few months back, the New York Times initiated an essay contest in which is asked college students to write a response to an essay by Rick Perlstein, What's the Matter With College?

Last week, the winner was announced. Nicholas Handler (Yale '09) responded with his essay, The Post-Everything Generation. Perlstein's essay was a nostalgic look back to a time when college was a place of rebellion, political agitation, and exploration of outsider culture. His essay seemed to lament the fact that kids today are too damn smart, too damn ambitious, and eager to take a seat at the table in society and the business world. Handler's essay puts a very different spin on the current college experience, summing up nicely something we've discussed here before on Future Majority: a guiding philosophy for the Millennial Generation.

Here's the relevant excerpt, but you should read the whole thing:

For us, the post-everything generation, pastiche is the use and reuse of the old cliches of social change and moral outrage–a perfunctory rebelliousness that has culminated in the age of rapidly multiplying non-profits and relief funds. We live our lives in masks and speak our minds in a dead language–the language of a society that expects us to agitate because that’s what young people do.

But how do we rebel against a generation that is expecting, anticipating, nostalgic for revolution? How do we rebel against parents that sometimes seem to want revolution more than we do? We don’t. We rebel by not rebelling. We wear the defunct masks of protest and moral outrage, but the real energy in campus activism is on the internet, with websites like moveon.org. It is in the rapidly developing ability to communicate ideas and frustration in chatrooms instead of on the streets, and channel them into nationwide projects striving earnestly for moderate and peaceful change: we are the generation of Students Taking Action Now Darfur; we are the Rock the Vote generation; the generation of letter-writing campaigns and public interest lobbies; the alternative energy generation.

College as America once knew it–as an incubator of radical social change– is coming to an end. To our generation the word ‘radicalism’ evokes images of al Qaeda, not the Weathermen. ‘Campus takeover’ sounds more like Virginia Tech in 2007 than Columbia University in 1968. Such phrases are a dead language to us. They are vocabulary from another era that does not reflect the realities of today. However, the technological revolution, the moveon.org revolution, the revolution of the organization kid, is just as real and just as profound as the revolution of the 1960’s– it is just not as visible. It is a work in progress, but it is there. Perhaps when our parents finally stop pointing out the things that we are not, the stories that we do not write, they will see the threads of our narrative begin to come together; they will see that behind our pastiche, the post generation speaks in a language that does make sense. We are writing a revolution. We are just putting it in our own words.

As a former English Lit. grad student, and an ex-philosophy major to boot, I love Handler's grounding of his piece in Jameson's Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. His movement from postmodern literary theory towards a positive vision of civic action and participatory democracy via the netroots is literally the arc of my life for the last 6 years. As such, Handler's piece resonates to my core. Take away the horn-rimmed glasses and skinny-jeans, and the whole thing rings true to me. What do you think of his take on the Millennial ethos the the college experience?

Not a bad gig, if you can get it. Also posted to the [[Jobs and Training]] section of our growing DIY Wiki.

[[http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/our-scholarships/political-blogging.htm|Scholarships Around the US]] - Political Blogging Scholarship This group offers a $2000 scholarship to college students who maintain a political blog. Applicants must be US citizens attending college full-time and maintaining a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Applicants are required to submit a 300 word essay answering any of the following questions:

• If you nominated a friend, what makes them and their blog so special?
• How can blogging improve democracy?
• Do bloggers enable and protect free speech?
• What are the best ideas you have helped spread?
• How do you intend to use blogging in the next election?

[[http://www.scholarships-ar-us.org/our-scholarships/political-blogging.htm|Apply Here]]