During this Fall semester of a Presidential election year, our students will learn, engage and act in a variety of ways. The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities’ (AJCU) Commission on Citizenship and Democracy, of which I am a member, has stressed multiple ways for students to engage democratically and institutions to help foster such activity. Our final document highlighted particular areas for “skill-building,” from practical participatory skills such as registering to vote, to dialogue and deliberation across differences, to counter-cultural action. At The University of Scranton, through civic dialogue programs, voter engagement efforts, a community oral history initiative, and faculty and student-led protests, I have seen our students learn about themselves, the world, and how to make an impact in changing it.
The Nuts and Bolts
For many college students, this will be the first time they vote in a Presidential election. Some will have accompanied their parents to the polls; for others, voting will be a new habit to form. In 2018, Scranton students led the creation of “Royals Vote” to engage students in a non-partisan manner to register and get out the vote. In 2020, we saw the fruit of those labors. The University’s voter registration rates increased to 87% of eligible voters: of those, voting increased significantly, rising to 84% in 2020 from 64% in 2016. Tabling, presentations in first-year seminars, and social media campaigns asking students their “why” – why they plan to vote in the upcoming election – are among some of the ways we’ve helped students make voting into what we hope will become a lifelong practice.
Dialogue to Learn and Act
While learning how to participate is key, helping students to further express themselves about the issues that matter to them can also unlock a discernment and excitement about the democratic process. After a spring political dialogue, one Scranton student shared how she had previously thought the presidential election “was something [in which] my contribution made little to no difference. However, now I realize voting is important.”
The experience of exchange across difference moved this student from political disengagement to seeing how her vote mattered.
Scranton’s political dialogue program, first instituted in 2017 by a group of faculty, staff and administrators, helps students embark on a journey of self-discovery by sharing and listening to one another on a range of contentious and timely topics. While assessments of such programs often focus on outcomes of depolarization and learning about the “political other,” we have also found over the years that students really learn about themselves as political actors. This is happening not in isolation, but rather in the tension of a campus community where opposing views have to coexist. In post-dialogue essays, students have shared how the dialogue helped them reflect on their own viewpoint – to learn “about my own political views as well as how to talk to others.” They have stressed the importance of practicing listening and how the dialogue can make them better advocates. As one student shared: “Listening to opposing viewpoints will allow me to form stronger, more well-developed opinions”; another student described wanting to be more “assertive” instead of “keeping quiet.”
Activation of a Generation
Each generation has issues they care about and prioritize. Over recent years and months, we have seen particular issues emerge, several of which resonate with our Jesuit and Catholic tradition of social justice, including climate change, immigration, gun violence and, most recently, Gaza and the pursuit of a just peace in Israel-Palestine. Our Commission stressed the importance of seeing “counter-cultural action,” such as protest, as part of democratic life even as these methods challenge more conventional forms of politics. This was true this past year, as we saw students from Jesuit universities join peaceful protests to end Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza, which followed Hamas’ horrific October 7th attack in southern Israel. At Scranton, students were part of a faculty-led protest of President Biden’s policies on Gaza when he visited the city in the spring, expressing dissent at a time when the Jesuits were also reiterating their call for a ceasefire in the Holy Land. We can expect students to continue to raise this and other urgent issues: having faculty guidance or support can be an important way for students to engage in such activism.
Encountering Experiences and Stories
Pope Francis’ entreaty “to become experts in the art of encounter” can also be viewed as “counter-cultural.” At Scranton, both in our political dialogue work and in a recent community-wide oral histories initiative, we have seen the power of encountering one another’s stories in building empathy and in fostering motivation to act for the common good. Following a Spring 2024 political dialogue, 95% of participants agreed/strongly agreed that talking about “experiences” helped them understand their political other. In prior post-reflections, this impact was also evident. One student described how the process of hearing others’ stories “on why they believe what they believe” made the person more relatable: “I could…put myself in their shoes.”
Through the Scranton Stories project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, we have also seen why sharing personal experience matters. Through this initiative, 33 local residents, from different backgrounds and experiences, shared what brought them and their family to Scranton and expressed their hopes for the city and the nation ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. Each participant shared from the heart, with both concern and affection for this country and the period of division that we have been living through.
Smriti Sitaula Sharma, a Bhutanese refugee, described becoming an American citizen as being a “big deal” while also worrying that the color of her skin might make some doubt that she belongs. Norma Jeffries recounted challenges she faced as an African-American woman in Scranton and said that when she finds something that disappoints her, she asks, “What can I do? What can I do?”
Scranton High School Teacher Jerry Skotleski, a descendant of Polish and Irish industrial-era immigrants, talked about how much he enjoys teaching the Declaration of Independence because it talks about what we hope to be as a country, even if we may never quite perfect it. He said, “What I’ve learned about us as a community and a nation is that we’ve never quit.”
Ushu Mukelo, a Congolese refugee, now-American citizen and alumnus of The University of Scranton, asked his fellow Americans to consider, “What are your contributions in preserving this democracy?”
This fall, our students, and all Americans, have the opportunity to make their own unique contributions. Democratic citizenship is a life lesson they will carry with them far beyond this semester and Jesuit institutions can do their part in teaching, supporting, facilitating, accompanying and listening to students as they put their learning into action.
By Julie Schumacher Cohen, Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement and Government Affairs, The University of Scranton