Using the classroom to cultivate student support for participation in campus Life: The call for civic education interventions

Extracurricular campus activities mirror the effects of associational life on political participation (Kuh 1995; Pascarella, Ethington, and Smart 1988; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). As encouraging student participation in such activities can be difficult (Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, Andreas, Lyons, Strange, Krehbiel, and MacKay 1991), this project describes an effort to promote peer enhancement of campus life. Students in a persuasion course developed a campaign to increase participation on campus. Preand postsemester questionnaires, as well as focus groups, reveal that students anticipated participating in more campus and community activities, and their attitudes toward the purpose of college broadened. Self-efficacy regarding several political tasks also improved. Students in a control group experienced no similar changes, suggesting that classroomactivities can address current college students political apathy. The conclusion calls for political scientists, who are the most familiar with declining political participation and the ameliorating effects of associational life, to initiate interdisciplinary interventions with the potential to reach the most alienated college students.