Q: How have you been engaged in the Carleton and Northfield community? What is your role with the CCCE? A: I initially became involved with the CCCE my freshman year as a volunteer with Uplift, a tutoring program focused primarily on helping Somali youth at Fairbault Middle School. We travel to Fairbault to help mostly ELL students with their homework and provide a fun and educational after school space. I became a program director for Uplift my sophomore year and am still one today. I started working as both the One Time Events Coordinator and the Political Engagement Coordinator in the CCCE this fall. The One Time Events portion of my job includes responding to requests from the community members for volunteers and helping student run programs including Carls-Against-Cancer, Books for Africa, and the Red Cross. However, with the election earlier this month, the political side of my job has taken up more of my time. Through my role in the CCCE, I have helped coordinate opportunities for students to get involved in activism on campus. This has included everything from organizing a political engagement fair to registering individual students to vote. My role is primarily helping students find ways to get involved in issues that they care about. There has been an activism void at Carleton for a few years now, and I hope the CCCE can play a role in filling that void. Students seem to want to get involved, but they may not know how. I want to provide a permanent resource both for students who know exactly what they want to do and for those people who may simply be interested in dabbling.
Q: What inspired you to get involved?
A: I first started volunteering with the CCCE to get out of the “Carleton bubble.” Carleton is a wonderful and very privileged place, but sometimes it can be suffocating. It is nice to once venture out into the “real world” once in a while and engage with people who are not college students or professors. Even at Carleton, I was drawn to organizations which have an impact beyond the borders of campus. However, until this year, I considered activism and community service to be two completely separate spheres. I believed you could not and should not mix the two. However, as I have reflected back on this past term, I realized my engagement in both political activities and volunteering is motivated by the same almost naive underlying belief: I can make a difference. I really do believe that individuals, working together with other people, can change the society for the better. This belief in individuals motivates my work through the CCCE.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of your experience?
A: Election Day 2012. Get Out the Vote emails had been sent. Transportation to the polls had been arranged. The watch party was planned and scheduled. Minnesotans United and the CarlDems had agreed to collaborate on some voter contact activities. The results of the day were almost completely out of my hands. Additionally, Carleton felt different. There was so much excitement surrounding the election and so many students actively engaged in campaigns on campus. It was completely electrifying. After election results came in that night, even though I was mentally and physically exhausted from fretting about election day activities, I felt incredibly proud both of Carleton and of the CCCE. I hope that in terms without a presidential race and two highly contentious amendments on the ballot, even a fraction of the energy will stick around permanently.
Q: What is one thing that has been challenging for you?
A: This is the first term the CCCE has had an official political engagement mission, so the biggest challenge was probably just getting the message out to campus that we want to support student activism. I spent a large portion of my time during the first few weeks of school emailing what felt like half of campus, trying to figure out who was
in charge of what organization. At the same time, we were (and still are) trying to define how the CCCE would be supporting political engagement. Once I got in touch with most of the organization leaders on campus, we were better able to define my role based on what they wanted and needed from the CCCE. All of my co-workers, especially Laura and the other members of the Political Cohort have been incredibly helpful in defining what political engagement means for our purposes.
Q: How does this experience connect to your future goals?
A: When I leave Carleton, I want to have built up the role of Political Engagement Coordinator into a permanent position that will ensure there is always institutional support for student engagement at Carleton. Most organizations on campus have remarkably short institutional memory, due to people graduating every four years and groups disbanding, but hopefully the CCCE can be a place for students to come who want to get involved in an issue or for a campaign. For me personally, I feel like my position in the CCCE has provided me many skills and experiences that will be very translatable to my post-Carleton life, from event coordinating to student organizing. Whatever I end up doing after I graduate, I want it to be working to make positive changes in society. And honestly, it will probably be political in nature.