Important Cause versus Democratic Process

Funny title, I know, but the tension between the two has been on my mind for a few days. Let me try to explain that tension more clearly.

I have been experiencing a sense of real concern of late regarding the need to do something on Staten Island and elsewhere about the problem of hunger. This is a surprisingly widespread problem and one that could be alleviated with more help from Wagner. This concern was partly brought on by a city-wide conference I want to recently about the issue of hunger and was further heightened by the impact of Hurricane Sandy on food banks and shelters. Wagner now has an opportunity to play much more of a role, it seems to me, to ensure that food banks and soup kitchens are well supplied with food and adequately staffed by volunteers. Given the human capital that is available at Wagner, this seems really doable, particularly if the College fully committed itself to it. Of course, I don't mean for the effort to stop there. We would also need to support students in strategizing more broadly about various efforts to reduce hunger and address poverty more forcibly. But the point here is that I think we need to go beyond general helping out in the community and do something dramatic to focus on a problem where there is genuine urgency.

Although this seems right to me, such an intense focus on one problem can undermine democracy in the sense that the students and the faculty and the staff need to decide together what is best and not have a certain direction imposed on them. The most important aspect of civic engagement may, in fact, be giving students and others practice in thinking about and acting on social problems. To hand them a problem and insist on action may be going too far and may even, to a certain extent, disempower them. On the other hand, part of the point of civic engagement is also to make a difference in the community and the evidence is strong that hunger and poverty are two problems that need major, sustained attention. How can we resolve or at least reduce this apparent tension?

Most likely the best way is to make the case for a focus on hunger and poverty, to demonstrate to students and others why these problems are so urgent, especially now. Using democratic principles, Wagner community members could deliberate about the importance of this very issue. How critical is it really? Why might it demand our attention at this time? If the case isn't sufficiently compelling, and the students decide to concentrate on another issue or problem, at least the exposure will have occurred and the students will have had the satisfaction of deciding for themselves where their energies should be directed. Of course, this could also mean that Wagner might lose a golden opportunity to take hold of a most challenging issue. But perhaps this is fitting and appropriate. Unless the commitment is there, no harping on the issue's importance can motivate students to give the issue the seriousness it deserves. And I am confident that in time they would come around and begin to acknowledge it as one of the central concerns of our time.

Let me add that what is described immediately above is probably too either-or. Some community members would likely embrace poverty as a focus; others would be uncomfortable with it. This, too, is as it should be and would provide multiple opportunities for the college community as a whole to explore its social commitments, its level of success in addressing some of the challenges the larger community faces, including hunger and poverty, and engage in an ongoing process of reassessing where those priorities should be.

In the end, then, the democratic process must be allowed to run its course, with the understanding that every decision is provisional and temporary and that it is the ongoing democratic conversation both on campus and in the community that will help to shape what the college's community priorities will ultimately become.