More students are seeking political awareness

By: Sarah Iani
Posted In: National News

Normal summer activities for college students usually include having a job, going to the beach or taking a road trip. For a politically minded student like Laura Cancellieri, however, this summer involved volunteering two Saturdays in July canvassing the Manchester, N.H., area, passing out information and taking surveys for the “John Kerry for President” campaign.

A freshman at Providence College, Cancellieri must have knocked on a couple hundred doors, most of whose occupants weren’t home, to try to determine whom the people were going to vote for in the primary. But that wasn’t too accurate, especially “when you’re staring someone in the face wearing a John Kerry t-shirt,” Cancellieri said.

More and more students like Cancellieri have been getting involved in politics in recent years. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, political awareness among students is at its highest level since 1994. Nearly 40 percent of students, when surveyed, answered that keeping up-to-date with political affairs was a very important goal, up from last year’s 32.9 percent.

In Rhode Island, this awareness comes in the form of student governments, and political internships. Providence College offers students organizations that split the student interests into PC Republicans and PC Democrats, as well as a student congress, consisting of five representatives from each class in addition to elected officers.

“Providence College has a somewhat active political scene,” Cancellieri said. “A senior here even took a semester off to work for Howard Dean’s campaign all over the country.” Cancellieri plans to become more involved in political life as well, already having run for vice-president of PC’s student congress although defeated. In addition to her volunteer work for Kerry’s campaign, she was active in her high school politics, serving as president of the student government. That experience and activity boosted Cancellieri to pursue politics in college. “I’d known that I wanted to major in political science for a while,” Cancellieri said. “I’ve always been interested in politics.”

That same interest also persuaded sophomore Kathleen Styger of Salve Regina University to join the Student Government Association in order to become more involved. The SGA, which meets every Tuesday night, actively reports complaints and general discontent at its meetings and forums then discusses ways to solve the issues. “The members really are interested in making Salve a better campus,” Styger said.

Although this is her first year in the SGA, Styger has always been somewhat interested in politics. Now with the war and the upcoming elections, Styger wanted to become more politically involved. “Since it’s an election year, I wanted to become more aware of the candidates and their issues,” Styger said.

According to “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” while political interest has risen, the views of freshmen college students have shifted towards the right this year, with 24.2 percent classifying themselves as liberal, down from 25.3 percent last year. An increase of students, 21.1 percent compared with last year’s 20.0 percent, declared themselves conservatives.

Dr. Clark Merrill, a politics professor at Salve, believes that most college student are in fact liberals, although he concedes that conservatives are on the rise. “It has to do with age more than anything else,” Merrill said. “However, more people want to join the winning side, as Republicans control both the Presidency and Congress.”

Although Merrill’s own college years were uneventful, occurring in the lull between the Vietnam War and the protests over apartheid, he believes political science attracts students who like to get involved. “As students learn more, they care more,” Merrill said. “It’s hard to learn about something that you don’t care about.”

Merrill, in his fifth year teaching at Salve, has seen a little increase in students choosing political science majors, and those incoming freshmen are more active politically than the preceding classes were. A possible reason for this increase in political activity? “9/11 and our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Merrill said. “Political interest rises around wartime. Young people are idealistic – anger and injustice riles them up, and an unjust war only arouses our youth.”