Student Citizens

This post was originally titled Student Activists, but it didn't quite fit what I've been thinking about. I needed a word with a different connotation; something that didn't give me the mental image of protests and police barriers. It started with student activists because of the protests at Gallaudet, and we've been learning about Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement in History of Higher Ed, but as I was writing, I found myself straying off to explain why any student should not be a student activist because they should be students first and foremost. Let me explain. We've all seen the Disney sports movie where the coach says, "they are student athletes ... student comes first." The dilemma is that English just doesn't work that way (and Jen is more then welcome to back me up or correct me). In English the adjectives and descriptive terms come before the subject. So a minority student is a student who is a minority and a student activist is an activist who is a student. I think it's great for students to be passionate about issues and to stand up for what they believe in, but they shouldn't be defined as activists. They are not here to change the world, they are here to learn how to change the world.

So why then did I accept Student Citizen? Because we can't help but be citizens first and foremost. Activist or not, passionate or not, student or not, we are citizens. Citizens of the university, the community, the state, or the country it doesn't matter; citizenry defines us. More and more, I'm seeing students so caught up in the role of student that they forget they are citizens. I'm included in the guilty party. When Benjamin Franklin wrote the founding documents for the Academy of Philadelphia he wanted an institution that would create good citizens. He wanted an experience that would teach students their power within and their responsibility to their government both federal and local. Has that gotten lost somewhere along the way?

In an NPR interview one of the student leaders from Gallaudet was asked, "Could students on this campus get as excited about the war in Iraq as, say, they were in protesting the choice of a president for their campus?" He replied, "I'm not so sure if they would, only because you know that's more of a Democrat/Republican thing. I don't know. Maybe we're too focused on our own community here." He continued to comment on the oppression that the students on campus were feeling. How do we reconnect students to the world? I presented for a class on election day and one of the students was working to convince the class that their vote was not worth the energy it took to cast it. I know he wasn't serious, but I've heard all of his arguments before. How can we return the image of voting to a right instead of an obligation? Programs like Rock the Vote have improved student turn out, but we need to go further. I don't want students failing classes because they spend too much time at sit ins and protests, but concern and attachment to the world beyond campus borders shouldn't is vital. The actions that are taken while a student is in college will define the world that she enters after graduation.