If you want to do something to abate the suffering of the people of Haiti during the most recent cholera epidemic, then donate to the Center for Political Participation’s “Help Haiti Heal” project.  The CPP is honoring the legacy of President John F. Kennedy, who proposed 50 years ago to start a war on poverty.

     Beginning Sunday, Nov. 21, and continuing through Dec. 16, the CPP will collect items that will go directly to Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  Bernard Mevs is one of the last hospitals left standing after the devastating earthquake there last Jan. 12.

     Allegheny College graduates Elizabeth Lemley Stanley ’05 and Briana Rusiski Kelly ’01 were at the hospital  last June with Project Medishare. The organization was founded in 1994 by doctors from the University of Miami  School of Medicine, a non-profit dedicated to sharing its human and technical resources with its Haitian partners.  Stanley and  Kelly are asking that students, faculty and staff, as well as the entire Meadville community, donate any basic-need items, including:

• toothbrushes, toothpaste, sanitary wipes, shampoo, soap, bandages, Q-tips, sheets, blankets, even old slings and crutches
• clothes (t-shirts, new packaged undergarments)  that are clean and in good shape
• flashlights
• hygiene and personal items.

     The goods collected in the next month by the CPP will be sent to Project Medishare for Haiti at the University of Miami, which will then forward everything directly to the hospital.

     Donations can be dropped off at the lobby of the Campus Center, beginning Sunday, Nov. 21, or at the CPP office at Brooks Hall during the week. Call Mary Solberg at 814-332-6202 for more information, or e-mail msolberg@allegheny.edu

     Allegheny College is a member of Harvard University’s National Campaign for Political and Civic Engagement. The CPP and other schools that belong to the consortium are undertaking several projects to mark the JFK 50^th: National Campaign Service Day on Nov. 21.

Editor’s Note: Here is Matt Lacombe’s column in its entirety:

Young Voters and the ‘Rally for Sanity’

November 5, 2010 By Matthew Lacombe

Last week Inside Higher Ed published a column by Scott McLemee entitled “Rude Democracy,” which discussed Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and apparent trends indicating a lack of political engagement among young people. McLemee’s argument was both intelligent and important, but I believe there’s another side to the story of Stewart’s rally, political civility, and turnout among college students and young voters in the 2010 midterm election.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans were very successful in the midterm election, gaining control of the House of Representatives and cutting into the Democrats’ majority in the Senate. While the politically active on campuses across the country will surely devote much discussion to the results of the election and their implications over the proceeding days and weeks, it’s less likely they’ll discuss the execrable turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds.

Early exit polling done by CBS News indicates that young people made up roughly 9 percent of all voters in the midterm election. In 2008, young people made up 18 percent of the electorate. Why?

Political scientists and campaign consultants offer several theories. Americans are more likely to vote when enthusiasm abounds for the candidates they support and young people tend to support Democrats. Young people historically don’t turn out for midterms. Barack Obama’s candidacy in 2008 was uniquely galvanizing for young voters. The agenda of Congress and the president has not adequately addressed energy policy — a very important issue to college students – and media coverage of the health care reform bill (which did quietly include benefits for young people) focused mostly on the concerns of older voters. Thus, young people seem to have concluded that voting isn’t worth their time right now.

I, however, believe that something deeper may explain young people’s disengagement in 2010. Scott McLemee, in his “Rude Democracy” piece, discusses Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity in light of a book written by the Georgia Tech political scientist Susan Herbst (which is also titled Rude Democracy).

Herbst studied the views of young people and found that “72 percent of students agreed that it was very important for them to always feel comfortable in class.” Herbst argues that “Contrary to the image of college being a place to ‘find oneself’ and learn from others, a number of students saw the campus as just the opposite – a place where already formed citizens clash, stay with like-minded others, or avoid politics altogether.”

Based on Herbst’s study, McLemee, writing prior to the sanity rally, argued that, while Stewart’s rally was likely to draw lots of young people and provide them with a fun weekend, “the anti-ideological spirit of the event is a dead end. The attitude that it’s better to stay cool and amused than to risk making arguments or expressing too much ardor — this is not civility. It’s timidity.” Clearly, McLemee believes that the unwillingness of young people to engage in political debate – argument – is not a political virtue, but rather a democratically harmful form of indifference.

Before accepting McLemee’s assertion, though, I think several important questions need to be answered. Why do the students in Herbst’s survey feel that it isn’t possible to persuade others? Could it be that such a belief is the product of an uncivil political culture? If students had political role models who successfully persuaded others in civil and respectful ways, would they be more inclined to view the political arena – and the classroom – as a space in which the clash of ideas can occur and yield positive results?

Personally, I can think of two positive things Stewart does; first, he encourages young people to refuse to subscribe to the currently pervasive ultra-partisan view of politics that fosters incivility and acts as a barrier to progress; and second, and more basically, he brings some level of political awareness through humor to people who might otherwise be totally apathetic and ignorant. Stewart’s influence, in my view, doesn’t breed timidity (as McLemee asserts), but rather increased youth engagement of the type that rejects a toxic political culture.

It also seems possible that the “Obama Effect” I mentioned earlier, holding that young voters turned out in 2008 because of their admiration of the current president, is at play. I’m worried that young people, perhaps naively, viewed Candidate Obama as a post-partisan role model and that President Obama’s lack of success thus far may further discourage engagement among young people who believed he had the ability to catalyze change without acting like every other “scumbag politician” they’ve come to dislike.

Moving forward, two things are clear. First, the perspective of young people has the power to change the nature of partisanship; if we, as a generation, continue to subscribe to the ideals of the Rally to Restore Sanity, we have the potential to improve the tone of politics.

Second, however, the burden most certainly falls on us; politicians are not going to pander to a portion of the electorate they don’t believe will turn out to vote, so if we want to transform Stewart’s rally from a sunny Saturday on the Mall into a new political reality, we’ve got to make our voices heard.

Matthew Lacombe is a senior at Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pa., and a student fellow at Allegheny’s Center for Political Participation.

A survey of 1,000 Americans nationwide suggests a wide majority believe it is unacceptable for groups to spend heavily on political advertising in districts where they are not located, a phenomenon dubbed “outside money.”

Two-thirds of those polled say they oppose this practice, while 26 percent support it.

Recent published reports in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets have noted that television spending by outside groups has more than doubled from what was spent at the same time in the 2006 midterm elections.   

An analysis published earlier this week in Politico.com reported that, “Never in modern political history has there been so much secret money gushing into an American election.  By Election Day, independent groups will have aired more than $200 million worth of campaign ads using cash that can’t be traced back to its original source.”

“While it might be true that outside groups have the legal right to flood these races with ads, many Americans are concerned that it distorts the democratic process,” said Daniel M. Shea, director of the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College, which developed and commissioned a poll, “Nastiness, Name-calling & Negativity: The Allegheny College Survey of Civility and Compromise in American Politics,” in spring 2010.

Shea expressed concern with the volume of money being spent by outside pressure groups in local races.  In Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, where Allegheny is located, numerous outside groups have hammered the airwaves with ads for and against both the Democratic and Republican candidates.

“On one level, outside money is not entirely new.  We’ve seen this before.  But the amount of money that is being spent by national groups is unprecedented.  As the head of an organization designed to promote grassroots campaigning, I worry that outside money will lead all citizens, but especially young citizens, to question the value of their own engagement,” said Shea

Much of Allegheny’s spring poll centered on issues related to the tone of politics, and its results have been widely circulated in the news media.  But the poll also queried about the outside money issue.  “We knew it would be a big issue this fall, and, sure enough, it is one of the most important issues of this campaign season,” said Shea.

Group spending has become the focus of attention since a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The High Court lifted restrictions on corporate spending in elections. Corporations, including nonprofit ones like labor unions, are no longer restricted when it comes to financing radio and television commercials that focus on voters and identify a political candidate.

The New York Times reported that in the weeks leading to this November’s hotly contested House and Senate races, many nonprofit advocacy organizations have begun to be more aggressive, explicitly asking voters to cast their ballots for or against candidates. “The vast majority of these political commercials are billed as ‘issue advocacy,’ said Shea, “but they are more easily recognized as attack ads.”

According to Shea, this latest twist on campaign financing laws speaks to the incivility permeating politics today.  An overwhelming majority of Americans polled last spring said they perceived an increasing rancor and hostility in politics. A second survey, conducted two weeks ago by the CPP, indicates that the majority of Americans believe civility has gotten worse, in large part due to the nature of campaigning.

“It’s no wonder,” Shea noted, “that four times as many Americans see the tone of campaigning as much more negative this year, than those who see the election as more positive. The floodgates are open, and we’re a torrent of nastiness and negativity.”

Self-described independents expressed the most opposition to outside election spending, at about 72 percent. Self-described Democrats and Republicans both oppose the practice, at about 65 percent, respectively.

Self-described conservatives, liberals and moderates oppose outside spending by about 65 percent, while a full 75 percent of Americans aged 50 and older oppose it, too. About 63 percent of Americans who earn more than $100,000 and 69 percent of those making less than $25,000 oppose outside spending.

View the reports:

• Americans Oppose Outside Money
• Nastiness, Name-calling & Negativity