Students gather for civic conference

On Feb. 11 50 to 60 college students from across Vt. will converge on campus to discuss what role community service and civic engagement play in their lives. The conference, dubbed the Student Think Tank on Civic and Community Engagement, is part of a larger initiative led by New England Research Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) to promote greater student involvement in the community.

According to their website, NERCHE is dedicated to “collaborative change processes in higher education to address social justice in a diverse democracy.” The organization functions as a group of think tanks addressing various issues in higher education with the goal of facilitating the work of practitioners through research and inquiry.

The Feb. event will be in affiliation with the organization’s student think tank, which “provides students with opportunities to explore and compare strategies for enhancing student civic leadership … building a network of student civic leaders in New England.”

After nearly two decades of work promoting service-oriented programs on campus, NERCHE is turning back towards the students themselves for the first annual conference of this kind.
“NERCHE feels its time to retake the 'student pulse' so to speak,” the College’s liaison Jillian Hall ’10 wrote in an email.

The College agreed to host the event to study how it can get the Middlebury student body more involved in the community. After the conference, the results will be passed on to NERCHE and “contribute to an on-going regional discussion among higher education institutions,” Hall added.

Organizers hope that event will lead to not only more community involvement outside of the classroom, but also greater civic involvement within regular Middlebury courses.

Instead of turning to activism through protests, some organizers see the future of political involvement for the current generation — a generation called by many to be politically apathetic — to be in civic and community engagement.

“It’s been said that our generation isn’t as politically involved,” said Quan Pham ’12, one of the students involved in organizing the event. “By doing civic engagement [we have] ‘alternative politics,’ not an alternative to politics.”

The event has been made possible through participation fees paid by each student’s host institution. The College representatives will be supported through a gift fund established for civic engagement initiatives.