Community Service Could Serve as Precursor to Political Participation in Students

Anne E. Blackhurst and Joshua Foster believe that "contemporary college students may not be acquiring-or enacting-the civic values fundamental to democratic citizenship." They conducted surveys at three colleges in 1996 and 2000 and found decreasing levels of cynicism and apathy; increasing optimism; and significant relationships between civic attitudes, service participation, and political participation. In their article College Students and Citizenship: A Comparison of Civic Attitudes and Involvement in 1996 and 2000, Blackhurst and Foster discuss the expectations for the students of the '90s to be as politically active (if not more) than their protesting predecessors of the '60s. Instead the 90's represented increasing cynicism and continuing political disengagement, and in 1994, the entering freshmen college students were the most disengaged from politics than any previous entering class.

Following the presidential elections in 1996 and in 2000, Blackhurst and Foster had undergraduate students from three Midwestern institutions complete questionnaires assessing their political attitudes and civic participation levels. Participants were selected based on their involvement in a list of general education classes, such as Macro Economics and Personal Health. Around 400 students each time and collected information on them from the following scales: The Apathy Scale, the Cynicism Scale, the Optimism Scale, the Political Commitment Scale, the Service Scale, and a demographic survey. To calculate their level of service participation, the students were also surveyed with the 2-item Service Scale.

In analyzing data from the questionnaires, descriptive statistics were used for the first three research questions. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and chi-square analyses were used to determine changes between the students' behaviors between 1996 and 2000. Then one-way ANOVAs, zero-order correlations and regression analyses were used to determine the relationship between the students' attitudes and their political commitment and service involvement. The alpha level for all statistical tests run was 0.05.

Some of the points Blackhurst and Foster wanted to make concerning the overall lack of interest in politics by the Millenials (students of the '90s) were that voters seemed to be students who participated in volunteer and community service work. Nonvoters tended to be students who didn't take part in volunteering. Along with others, these findings suggest that we must change students' attitudes in order to change their political participation. Nonvoters and nonvolunteers are typically more apathetic, more cynical and less optimistic than volunteers/voters. Although it is unclear whether volunteering actually serves as a prerequisite for political participation, Blackhurst and Foster found that higher levels of cynicism about the political process were associated with lower levels of volunteering.

Blackhurst and Foster also found by statistical analysis that more students agreed in 2000 than 1996 with the statement "I look forward to participating in the political process after college." This may indicate that the students of the future will be bigger political participators than the students of the '90s. Statistical analysis also found that students in 2000 were more trusting of political officials than students in the '90s.

This call of action has already been taken by such forms as emails, voter registration forms and by calling and reminding students about voting. They have all been successful, yet there is the need to make volunteering for political campaigns more accessible to students. According to Blackhurst and Foster, 86% of college students believe that volunteering in the community is easier than volunteering in politics. This needs to be changed.

The problem of apathy among students could be cured by more education on political officials, candidates and their issues. Most students don't even know what party they belong to, never mind what a party platform is. Blackhurst and Foster predict, fortunately, that Millenials will be the college student generation known for its high trust in political officials and its frequent political participation. A speculation exists that apathy is a stronger indicator of participation than cynicism but it could just be a mediating variable.

Foster and Blackhurst state that in future research on this subject, racial identity and participation should be studied. For this article, mainly students of Caucasian race were surveyed because of the area of the colleges. Refined research should indicate the differences culture and race have towards civic attitudes and participation.

In the article Young Americans' Indifference to Media Coverage of Public Affairs, Stephen Earl Bennett states that the youth of America is politically inept because of their avoidance of exposure to mass media coverage of public affairs. He used polls from The Pew Center to show media exposure by age and attention to types of news stories by age. Bennett concludes that young people don't follow politics because their lives are too busy to read or watch debates and state of the union addresses. The Blackhurst and Foster article contributes to this by use of the Apathy Scale and Service Scale statistics that say that only a small percentage of students are interested in keeping up in politics or volunteering.

Sheilah Mann describes how the interest in politics among American freshmen has long been in a decline and reached a record low in 1998 and only 2% of freshmen of that year stated that they would select political science as their major. She uses statistics from ASPA's Annual Survey that asks what essential or very important objective 1998 freshmen had, and the probably majors of 1998 freshmen. Mann concludes that the ASPA's Task Force on Civic Education program will improve the political awareness of students. Blackhurst and Foster's thesis is basically the same thing as Mann's in that college freshmen have reached an ultimate low in political participation.

Volunteerism and Arrest in the Transition to Adulthood by Christopher Uggen and Jennifer Janikula states that by informal social control theories, it can be proved that volunteer service promotes prosocial behavior actions such as helping behavior and political participation. They analyzed data collected during the first eight waves of the Youth Development Study, in which a panel of students started taking the surveys in 1988 (while in the 9^th grade) until 1991. Uggen and Janikula speculate that volunteering between the ages of 16 to 21 is advantageous to the formative academic and political character. Blackhurst and Foster contribute to this article by also stating that there is a correlation between civic service and political participation.

Blackhurst and Foster use descriptive statistics to prove that current college students are not interested in political participation and that there may be a correlation between this and volunteering and community service. They predict that students in the future, known as Millenials, will be the most politically active of their predecessors and will have high trust in political officials and candidates.