Students hunger for involvement

The Indiana Public Interest Research Group is a student organization whose goal is to run campaigns that fight for student and public interests. INPIRG runs three to four campaigns each semester that focus on a variety of local issues. \nOne prevalent issue addressed each semester is that of hunger and homelessness. Christine McGinley, IU junior and the INPIRG board chair, said the organization is already preparing for a "hunger clean-up" scheduled to take place on April 5. She hopes to work with other student groups on campus as well as community members and faculty and student volunteers on this campaign. \n"It seems like this is an issue that most people would agree that we can come together and work on," McGinley said. "It's definitely not really a political issue; it's just something that most people should care about."\nThe 2003 hunger clean-up will begin with a mass meeting in a yet-to-be-determined location, McGinley said. Then volunteers will form smaller groups to participate in various activities. These include working at a soup kitchen, going door to door collecting cans for food banks and cleaning up local shelters and recreational areas. \nAlso, each volunteer will have a sponsor, who will pledge money based on the number of hours the volunteer will work, similar to a sponsor for a charity race when the sponsor would pledge money by the kilometer or mile. All money raised will be donated to a local shelter.\nIn addition to its hunger and homelessness campaign, INPIRG works with ecopledge, a national not-for-profit organization and runs a voter education campaign.\nWith ecopledge, INPIRG tries, through letter writing, pledges and petitions, to convince large businesses to increase their use of recycled materials. Last semester, the organization ran a successful campaign against Staples and is currently trying to persuade Sprint to use recycled paper when printing their bills. \nThe voter education campaign is aimed at informing the student demographic that they can make a difference and have an impact where politics is concerned, said Erich Eschmann, INPIRG campus organizer and the organization's only full-time, non-student staff member. \n"Students united together as a demographic have the potential to have a lot of power in our democratic system, and unfortunately there are a lot of students who don't necessarily participate very often in politics and democracy," Eschmann said. "The (voter education) campaign is aimed at getting the students engaged in the political process and activating them as citizens."\nINPIRG encourages students of all political parties to participate in politics. They have held question and answer forums and sponsored a free concert in Dunn Meadow where they provided political information for students. McGinley said encouraging students to exercise their right to vote will end a vicious cycle involving the lack of value placed on student opinions.\n"When students aren't taken seriously, then they don't want to vote which means then they're not taken seriously, so it's like this circle," she said.\nINPIRG is a branch of the national not-for-profit organization, PIRG. There is a branch of PIRG in virtually every state, which McGinley said is a great advantage to the success of the organization.\n"In the end, we can all pool our resources and make a difference. So even though INPIRG only has one school with one office, the fact that we're a national organization and have so much support from so many other programs in the country, means that we can actually make a difference," she said.\nEschmann also spoke about the importance of student volunteers. \n"The power to approach these issues comes from the sheer number of people we have involved and the idealism and enthusiasm of the students involved in working on these issues," he said. "We couldn't do what we do without the sheer number of people working with us."\nVolunteers also benefit from the INPIRG programs. According to an INPIRG publication, "they get a chance to face up to society's big problems, take action and win concrete changes that improve the quality of our lives."\nINPIRG will hold an informational meeting at 7 p.m. in the State Room East of the IMU. For further information about INPIRG, contact the organization by e-mail at inpirg@indiana.edu.