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.