I am waiting

“I am waiting for the American Eagle to... straighten up and fly right.... I am awaiting, perpetually and forever, a renaissance of wonder.” So wrote my favorite Beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in 1958, expressing his generation’s yearning for an authentic politics, on the eve of one of the most dramatic student movements in U.S. history.

That yearning endures in every group of students I have ever taught, whether seventh graders in Greece or undergraduates at Yale University, the University of Texas at Austin or Duke. Sometimes that yearning burns brightest in the energies of individual students. I think of Andrew Cunningham, who helped create an all-girls school in Kenya and founded the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research. I think of the quieter work of Duke students who tutor children in Durham’s public schools. All three of my children have been taught and nurtured by the engagement of Duke students.

Sometimes that yearning burns brightest in partisan efforts that seem to transcend partisanship. I think of the work of Duke students in the last presidential election, a movement for change that literally delivered the heart of the old Confederacy to the first black president in our history. Barack Obama captured North Carolina by winning just one age cohort, voters aged 18 to 29, who voted for Obama by a three to one margin. Duke students led the way in that movement, turning out some of the highest percentages in the state, with 85 percent of all students voting and an astounding 91 percent of the class of 2012.

Today, the political engagement of Duke students seems radically reduced. When I voted last Tuesday, I discovered that out of 1,671 students registered on Duke’s East and West campuses, just 18 had voted. A vast majority of Duke students seem to be waiting rather than doing in this election cycle.

But waiting for what? When I asked my students why just 18 had voted, one student suggested his peers didn’t need to vote because they were rich. Such cynical generalizations seem fashionable again, making the provocative “hope” articulated by Duke students just two years ago seem a distant memory. But there are more mundane reasons for students’ lack of engagement this year. In 2008, students had a voting site on campus: This season, because of financial constraints, the Board of Elections could not support an early voting site at Duke.

Unfortunately, Duke administrators have provided little help redressing the access problem. Nonpartisan Duke student groups asked Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta for buses more than a month ago that would have taken students to the polls during early voting and on election day. But Moneta declined each request, citing “logistical” challenges.

That inadequate response makes me question Duke’s vaunted commitment to students’ civic engagement. It costs Duke roughly $10,000 to send every DukeEngage student abroad. It costs about $1,000 to rent one of Duke’s buses to drive voters to the polls for a day. Is it really possible that the logistical challenge of sending one bus one mile into Durham a couple dozen times, bringing several hundred Duke students to the polls, is greater than sending one student to Calcutta, India?

Blaming the administration for low student turnout may seem unfair, as students certainly bear responsibility for making it to their polling places. If they can find their way to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park or Shooters II, then surely they can find their way to their polling place. No doubt faculty bear some responsibility, too. How many of us have even mentioned that an important election is underway, one that will determine the future of all major legislative change over the next two years, including action on global warming, the Bush tax cuts, comprehensive immigration reform and deficit reduction? Some of my politically minded colleagues seem to be waiting for a purer form of politics before engaging, a moment that may never arrive.