By Peggy Mansperger

“There’s nothing I can do.”
“It won’t make a difference anyway.”

These are just a couple of the phrases that have given our generation the stereotype of apathy and self-centeredness. But according to Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, students are neither apathetic nor self-centered—they are just unaware of the problems, unaware of the solutions, or unaware that they can make a difference.

Loeb is a man who has been working to increase students’ awareness in these three arenas. According to his website, he “has spent over thirty years researching and writing about citizen responsibility and empowerment.” He has written five books, lectured at 400 colleges and universities, and last Friday, graciously became my interviewee. What he had to say was powerful.

Awareness of the Problems

We began with the problem of students being unaware of the issues. In order to understand this problem, Loeb says that we must ask who is at fault for students not knowing.

In December 2005, the Bush administration cut $12.7 million in Federal financial aid. In one of his articles, Loeb writes that while traveling the college circuit, he asked students if they knew about the cuts. “A few knew,” he says, “maybe one in five. The rest had no sense the cuts had even occurred, in part because [the cuts’] greatest impact was buried in the fine print of student loan agreements. As a result, students’ voices were silent when the cuts went through.” Asked who is at fault, he says, “ National Media. Campus Newspapers. Administrations. The administrations fought it, but didn’t get the students involved. They should’ve gotten them involved, because it was a threat to the students. Some did act, like the United States Student Association (USSA). But all of these [groups] could have involved others. We can do something if we get others involved.”

Ultimately, Loeb suggests that in order for students to know more, we must demand to know more—and we must share what we know with others. Becoming informed, and helping others to become informed, is the responsibility of all of us. (To toot our own horn, Loeb gave the National Student News Service props for our role in this.)

But what should students do once they know there is a problem? First, says Loeb, we must ask the hard questions.

He told me the story of a student who had helped in a homeless shelter. The student said that his volunteer experience felt so great he hoped his grandchildren would be able to work in that same homeless shelter one day. A friend turned to him and said, “You should hope there won’t be any need.” Why are homeless shelters necessary? What is the bigger problem? These are the types of hard questions Loeb says we must ask.

Additionally, Loeb suggests we must be brave when confronting a new problem. “Don’t be afraid to take risks,” he says. “Know that when you start to act, you may not have all the answers. And that’s ok. You can say ‘I can get back to you.’ It’s okay to get into things a step at a time.” He also says we must not shy away from difficult topics. “We cannot be afraid to talk about the hard issues: Guantanamo, Iraq, Global Warming. We have to talk about it. That’s the only way to get thinking about it, so then we can address it.”

Awareness of the Solutions

Loeb says students are recognizing the problems our country is facing, and that we’ve unfairly been labeled as apathetic. But once we’ve recognized the problems, the next step is to do something about them. “We gain something profound when we stand up for our beliefs, just as part of us dies when we know that something is wrong, yet do nothing,” he said.

Loeb encourages bravery in our actions as well as our questions. He says lots of situations “begin with terrible odds, but we find ways to act.” As ways to the solutions, Loeb recommends trying to learn as much about the issues as possible, putting pressure on campus and national media to educate students and people in general, and getting other people involved. Above all, he says, “always remember the possibility. If you do nothing, nothing will happen. Remember that others are involved. It is amazing how much a few people can do.”

In illustrating the difference students can make, Loeb told the story of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, tomato pickers who started a boycott against Taco Bell for improved wages and working conditions. The four-year boycott grew into a victory largely because of the support of college students. According to an article on the Democracy Now website, twenty-two colleges successfully removed or blocked Taco Bell businesses from their campuses. The students’ boycott helped encourage Taco Bell to increase the amount it pays for tomatoes, and thereby helped improve the workers’ living and working conditions.

Loeb believes a large part of the solution to any problem lies in getting other people involved. He suggests students should look at where other activists have come from, and he illustrates this point with the story of Rosa Parks. Parks is often misinterpreted as a tired woman who simply sat down on a bus, but she had been an activist for twelve years prior to her famous arrest. “This in no way diminishes the power and historical significance of Parks’s refusal to give up her seat,” explains Loeb. “But it reminds us that this tremendously consequential act, along with everything that followed, depended on the humble and frustrating work that Parks and others undertook earlier on.”

Loeb uses this example to remind us that change is not immediate and that slow progress should not discourage us from acting. He quotes religious activist Jim Wallis: “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.”

The example of Rosa Parks also debunks the myth that activists come out of nowhere, says Loeb. “Who got Rosa Parks involved [in the civil rights struggle]? Her husband Raymond Parks. Who got Raymond Parks involved? We don’t know, but [Raymond Parks] was a barber; it may have been one of his customers. Whoever it was, what if it wasn’t for that first person? Get other people involved, and you may be getting the next Rosa Parks involved.”

Awareness That We Can Make a Difference

Loeb said that some people suffer from a sense that what they do is not going to matter. To these students, Loeb tries to tell stories that say, “You never know.”

“People don’t think that registering voters and knocking on doors matters, but they have to recognize that sometimes there are very small races.” He said that in an election near his hometown, a candidate won with a 134-vote difference. “If it wasn’t for the maybe 25,000 people on the campaign, it wouldn’t have happened. They swung the difference.”

Loeb says that part of knowing that we can make a difference lies in knowing what others have done before us. He told the story of a student who complained to him that our schools teach us that Lincoln freed the slaves and women got the right to vote, but not how they did it. In the words of the student, “We don’t learn the processes, just the result.” Loeb says we need to ask schools to teach us those processes—what has been done, what worked before, and what made a difference.

When I asked how to get other people on board, Loeb said to find the heart of the issue.
“Tell it in a way that makes it real, not just the numbers,” he recommends. “Numbers are powerful, but you’d do best to say ‘this is why I’m involved; this is why I’m really concerned.’”

“People have to feel like what they do is going to matter,” he continued. “When the unforeseen benefits of our actions are taken into account, any effort may prove more consequential than it seems at first.”

Loeb told the story of twenty young women who stood protesting in the rain. They left feeling defeated—like they hadn’t made a difference. Years later, one of the women stood at a similar protest among thousands. Dr. Spock (a famous child psychologist) took the stage—he had used his celebrity status to spread awareness about the issue, and now he was there to speak. Standing in front of the thousands he had helped get involved, he told the story of how years before he had once seen twenty women in the rain protesting this very same issue. He said he thought to himself, “If they think it’s that important I should look into it.” He did, and then dedicated himself to it. Those twenty women had made a huge difference.

“People are told they don’t have the standing to have a voice. But [the powers that be] tell that to everyone. People think ‘I don’t know enough. Others are better; they know more.’ We come up with lots of excuses. And so we end up setting a standard that none of us can meet. And that is very dangerous.”