Paul Rogat Loeb: On Campus Organizing

Written by: Susan Rowe on Aug 8, 2008 4:42 PM EDT

Linked to groups: DFA-CFD of Fresno & Madera Counties, Democratic Club of Coarsegold, DFA-Link Organizers, DFA of Chowchilla, DFA-CFD of Mariposa and Tuolumne Counties , DFA of Stanislaus County, Blog For America, blog for America Test and Poll Group

Linked to campaigns: Obama for America

* Involve your own students--but more important, take the lead in getting your campus as fully engaged as possible.  You can start with the concise CampusChecklist, which draws on both the Campus Vote Initiative and Your Vote, Your Voice to summarize key approaches, list all the key offices or departments to contact, and give you great examples, explanations, and templates so you won't have to reinvent the wheel. The companion campus election guide tells how to get people involved in your school.

* Integrate into current activities—then expand your efforts. Find out what's already happening on your campus. Plan so you can fill gaps and strengthen existing efforts. Build a team involving as many key offices and departments as possible, plus anyone else who wants to help. Most campuses have some logical starting places—like the community service center and the office of student affairs--so check with them first, and with the president's office. But anyone who is enthusiastic enough can help enormously, whatever their position. Top administrators or senior professors have recently launched full-scale voter engagement efforts at some schools. At others, the initiative came from a campus librarian, counselor, secretary, or engaged student. You may not know all the key people at first, but one office can usually lead you to another. If you get enough energetic people involved, together you can engage everyone else whose cooperation is necessary, and follow up to ensure they're doing all they need to.

* Draw in other allies and coordinate with other campuses. Campus Compact's state offices are working to follow up in each state where they have offices, so let your state coordinator know you're participating. If you'd really like to help, you could also contact colleagues at other campuses, and pass on this email. Departmental resources allowing, you could even support statewide election-engagement efforts by making service learning or work/study resources available as stipends for grad students (or energetic undergraduates) to help your state Compact with their outreach.

* Use the online tools. Campus Compact's election engagement project is creating a mapping tool, similar to the one that helped FocusTheNation organize 1,900 campus teach-ins on global warming. It will let interested people at any given school connect with each other to help engage their campus, and help the state Campus Compacts see which campuses are already self-organizing, and which need follow-up reminders. If you enter your information, you can connect with, say, someone in residence life who finds out through their national association, or someone in the counseling office who gets engaged through theirs, and then all work together.  You can also use interactive tools like Facebook, where Your Vote, Your Voice has just created a page. But again, please enter your information so others can contact you using the mapping tool.

For the organizing guide http://www.campuselectionorganizer.org

For the mapping tool http://www.campusvotemap.org

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Location: Seattle, WA 98122