After high school, I noticed a sharp decline in my engagement. I took on a full-time job, averaged 15-18 credit hours per semester in college, and lived on a farm requiring much of my help. I took on a lot at the age of 18, but as I look back, I realize now I was missing something: my devotion to the community. I suppose it was partly due to my full schedule, but it is partly due to the fact that I was no longer in any organization.

This article has opened up my eyes because previously, I would have disagreed with Florida being on the low-end of civic engagement. However, looking at the past few years, I can honestly say that among the people I have been associating with, none of us volunteer. Lately, I noticed my friends who have graduated or received their masters are more willing with volunteer their time than someone without a college degree. As it seems, college life offers a myriad of student involvement programs geared towards bringing the community together. Those that join these programs seem to carry on with them upon graduation. Overall, my Civic Engagement class with Dr. Ball has definitely enlightened me to find interest groups and NPOs that I would be willing to donate my time to in the very near future.

As someone not as informed in Tocqueville as in other theoreticians and commentators of a more recent trend, I’m curious as to whether he saw the foundation of local government and its organs – as in councils, or mayors, or similar entities – or the semi-political, social capital-building civic organizations as more important (or equally important) in contributing to America’s participatory nature. I’m curious because as the size, diversity, and even definition of ‘communities’ has changes since those times, so has the nature of the civic organizations that underpin the social organization inside those communities. In “Bowling Alone” Putnam also comments on Tocqueville’s view of American society and builds a thesis on the significant shifts (on a more recent scale at least) in participation in organizations, and its effect on the gradual degradation of social capital and political activity. Were these organizations more prolific in Tocqueville’s time, and could they possibly explain the stronger sense of activity in local government of that time, or was local government simply much much stronger, considering the rural nature of society in those eras?

In my humble opinion the two keys to civic engagement in terms of voting in Presidential elections and beyond are education and accessibility. First of all, college students need to know what is going on in their community. Perhaps, during the week of elections, whether it be local or beyond, there can be advertisements via organizations like Stetson Votes that provide short blurbs on what’s going on in the local government. As Dr. Nylen pointed out in his article, “The Promise of Local Government as a School of Democracy (Part 2) The City of DeLand, Florida”, people usually get involved when they’re upset. By educating the people on what’s going, it may ruffle a few feathers and produce some kind of incentive to vote or get involved.

Secondly, accessibility is pivotal to voter turnout especially in younger people. To put it plainly, the idea of standing in line to vote is dreadful. There’s no immediate result and it’s a gamble on whether or not your candidate will even win so in the end it could be time wasted. This isn’t necessarily my view, but I know it to be a view of my peers. Some will argue, voting is accessible! It’s right down the street at the courthouse, but the truth of the matter is that until it’s on the doorstep and in their face with very little inconvenience posed at all, voter turnout will be low. The establishment of voting on school campuses may seem far fetched now but I think it’s necessary to the civic engagement of younger Americans in terms of voting.

Stetson Votes is absolutely a step in the right direction and can be used as a beacon for other schools to follow. It is this sort of organization that should push for voter education and accessibility to enhance voter turnout of college students, at the local, state and federal levels.

With how fast-paced society has become, individuals have lost their sense of comfortability with others and I believe it is our duty to try and reconnect individuals back to the importance of engaging in civic and political lives with one another for the sake of a better future. Let’s look at Thomas Lutz’ facebook articles. He presents an example of how to adapt to private individualism through technology, a factor that Marcella Ray discusses in her article “Technological Change and Associational Life” to be a cause of private individualism, but how it can also be a new way of facilitating civic and political engagement (297). Lutz has created a way of making individuals feel comfortable enough through technology to engage in political debates with others. Such activity can motivate individuals to return to appreciate connecting with others.

The internet can serve as a way for individuals to seek civic and political information, and participate with others over current issues. Marcella Ray discusses how today, individuals have the ability to choose whether to detach themselves from civic and political matters , which has contributed to the issue of private individualism (312). However, by the means of technology, activists can draw individuals back into associational life. Thomas Lutz demonstrates how the internet can serve as a new frontier of associational life, creating political activity for individuals to come together again. Technology is something that is embedded in everyday life, it can help alleviate private individualism and promote public activities for an ever more enduring associational life. We must adapt to private individualism by creating new means of satisfying civic and political interests of different individuals, and technology can gradually help bring individuals together to new forms of associational life.

References:
Skocpol, Theda, and Morris P. Fiorina. Civic Engagement in American Democracy. 1st. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. 1-514. Print.

Something else I’m interested in is the role of class – that is, specifically, economic class and income levels – in an election like this; did the Obama campaign’s techniques for mobilization influence the participation of the economically disadvantaged, and if it did which of these tactics can we use to increase participation and engagement by the politically inactive, economically disadvantaged individuals in the system who, largely, are some of the least active? According to Schlozman, Verba and Brady, political engagement in America is very clearly stratified by class levels, something indicative of how much of a ‘money’ game politics can be here. The data seems to show the poor give less time and money (which is understandable), but also participate less overall in other political activity; in addition, those in lower social strata also show low levels of susceptibility to recruitment devices; recruitment is self-serving in that it intentionally targets those who are more likely to be active or return to being active, and there is little interest in bringing any ‘new blood’ into the political game. All these factors together have created a severe gap in participation that we should naturally try to bridge if we are to ensure equal representation for different social groups in our political system; can the tools that brought out so many voters in this election for president Obama be used effectively here, applied to a new demographic?

Or have they already? The correlation between racial dynamics and social class seem strongly interrelated; nonwhite families in America on average have significant less net worth than white families, particularly among the black community. With the Obama campaign’s success in bringing out these minorities, has this changed the social class aspect of political participation at all? It’d be interesting to look and see if there are relationships or anything to be explored here, I think.