Initiative focuses on apathy, civic engagement

A new project at IU is looking to reverse a decline in local civic engagement and participation. The project is part of a national effort to promote democracy.\nThe American Democracy Project, which is co-sponsored by The New York Times and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, will encourage professors to incorporate community participation into their courses.\n"The initiative here at Indiana University is a little over a year old," said James Perry, director of the ADP at IU. "The work here has mostly revolved around defining what civic engagement is and identifying opportunities for students."\nThe project has now enlisted 190 colleges and universities across the country. Unlike IU's satellite campuses, the Bloomington campus is not directly involved with the ADP but has similar programs that work toward the same goal of increasing interest in civic engagement. Many of these programs are beginning this semester. \nCASE: Conversations about Service and Engagement is one new program that demonstrates the kind of influence the ADP hopes to spread. Co-facilitated by seniors Kathleen Claussen and Juhi Verma, the program will incorporate discussion topics like global citizenship and civic engagement into weekly meetings with students from the Global Village, the Foster International Community and Intensive Freshman Seminars.\n"CASE has been fantastic," said Claussen, who also is on the ADP advising board at the national level and an Indiana Daily Student employee. "We've had new students every meeting. The ones who've been coming have been really committed, and they bring up so many different perspectives in the discussions."\nBecause these programs are very new to campus, Internet information can be vague and of little help to visitors really wanting to look into the program. \nTo increase publicity, the Civic Engagement Task Force, which consists mostly of faculty, has been working to design a Web portal that will "put all the resources you need in a one-stop shopping trip," Claussen said. The Web portal, which is scheduled to be released sometime this semester, should increase access for faculty, community members and students to the resources they need to understand these projects and to get involved in community service and politics. \nPerry said there might even be a pilot program beginning this spring to provide students with the electronic edition of The New York Times. The program is based on studies showing that newspaper reading encourages engagement in the community and sparks discussion and concern among citizens. \nAlso among ADP's plans is an IU Press book for faculty members about how teachers and professors can incorporate the values of the ADP into their courses. Perry said the book should be published sometime next year.\nAlthough it might be some time before more faculty members and organizations around the IU campuses catch on, the ADP already has attracted the attention of one former official of the College Democrats.\n"There hasn't been much press on the ADP, but from what I know about it, the College Democrats will probably cross paths with it sooner or later," said Peter Cheun, former vice president of the College Democrats. Some have criticized the initiative as straying too far from the business of universities and colleges, saying that civic duty and engagement are lessons that can be learned outside of the classroom.\nIn response to these criticisms, Perry said, "I think it's a part of educating our students. If we send them out without any sense of civic duty and responsibility, then I think we've failed in educating them." \nIt remains to be seen if the ADP and programs modeled after the project really will catch on and make their way into more classrooms, but organizers like Perry and Claussen said they are hopeful and determined.\n"If you sum up ADP as a movement, then IU is very much at the heart of it," Claussen said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Kye Lee at kyelee@indiana.edu.