<< The Body Politic

Citizenship roundup

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Here’s an end-of-the-week news roundup for things happening in the citizenship world you may have missed:

• CIRCLE has compiled some great reports examining youth voting behavior in the presidential election. According to their estimates, “66% of eligible youth who have any college experience turned out to vote, while 35% of youth with no college experience turned out to vote.” Another interesting finding was that “reasons for choosing the candidate differed by college experience. When asked what qualities mattered most in deciding how they voted, 34% of youth without college experience said ‘caring about people like them’ mattered most, whereas youth with college experience said the most important quality was to ‘have a vision for the future’ (32%).” Check out their fact sheets here.
• Writing for the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, Bridget Draxler, a professor at Monmouth College, highlights a new civic engagement program at St. Olaf College: “Students in these courses–freshmen and sophomores–gain experience in partnering with the community that sets the foundation for more intensive community-based research in future years, like the Ideals to Action course, the civic engagement component of study abroad through Asian Conversations, and the Globalization and Citizenship Radio Project.  [...] Civic engagement at St. Olaf is not a tacked on or isolated opportunity but a cumulative, integrated experience. “
• Rebekah Sanderlin, an Army wife, writes in the New York Times “At War” blog about the challenges that military families face: “I’ve been an Army wife for nearly a decade, but when I add up the days I’ve lived with my soldier, the days between the deployments and other military trips, the total is only about four years. Most of those days must be patched together into a crazy quilt of weeks and months, with off-day celebrations for the missed holidays and birthdays.”