Who joins, and why?

I'd like to start with a general look into some of the questions surrounding student political action, such as motivations, methods and behavior of these organizations. I'd like to start this with some commentary by Paul Loeb. In his book, "Generations at the Crossroads: Apathy and Action on The American Campus" Loeb writes, what can best be summarized as a sociological look at student political action in the early 1990s. He sees politically apathetic students, and tries to explain why they became so; he then turns to politically active students, and tries to find what made them so. As a side note, Loeb's politically active subjects are exclusively progressive, and his non-active examples are at times highly conservative. I am unsure if this is because ideology creates some kind of selection bias within the population of politically active students, or if Loeb's anecdotal format creates an unintended reflection his own political beliefs. (For the record, I suspect it is the latter).

In any case, Loeb explains how politically active students often start out in non-political/non-partisan service activities. Working at a soup kitchen, helping the regional food bank or volunteering has a big brother/sister are common activities of the college-aspirant high school senior. Loeb traces the exposure to poverty as catalyst for a deeper political awareness. The process starts when student volunteers observe and (attempting to alleviate poverty) through service work. This leads to a general questioning of why such a prosperous nation like America allows its' poor to hungry or homeless, and requires altruistic people to create the support network that the hungry and the homeless use to survive. But, Loeb points out, that "to grapple with the root causes of social ills, service participants need context where they can gain critical perspective on their experience." (244). This is why the college setting is so important.

This is a key component to organizations that use a campus organizer. Employed full time, campus organizers will work on a college campus to essentially get students to execute the end goals of the organizational work, with the exchange of skills training and involvement in the constructions of the organizational work itself. But what makes the organizer beneficial for both individual students and campus' as a whole; as organizers help guide students with the context Loeb mentioned.

People go through a lot during college, especially traditional students. The combination of intellectual growth with social and emotional development is tumultuous at the least. What makes organizations that use campus organizers, like PIRG, so effective is that the organizer is able to build individual relationships with the students it's trying to recruit.

Abstract

I have an honors thesis due by the end of the year(?). It's going to be about student political organizing and action. which is logical because I've been deeply involved with the student-version of the Public Research Interest Group, (or PIRG for short) so I've gotten a lot of first hand experience on the issue. However, this paper isn't going to just be a diary; I plan to produce an actual, intellectual document on the issue of how students politically organize themselves, and for what reasons. I figure the best way to write about this topic would be to start writing.

I'm the current Board Chair of MassPIRG, so a lot of my stuff is going to focus on that, for now anyways. PIRG is a useful analytical tool for this issue, since the organization acts as a petri dish for how student activism works for the broader network of the progressive policy lobbying in the US. But PIRG isn't the whole story either, and my analysis needs to be aware of that. As a side-note, I will (and have) been critical of PIRG in some aspects. But I'm still very committed to the work I do with it, and think highly of its goals and staff. I feel a there are a few (fixable) issues with it that hinder its performance.

I'd like to invite any one reading to invite their own experiences and opinions, especially if they contrast with my own.