The USG Senate met with representatives of the Pace Center, the Student Volunteers Council (SVC) and Community House yesterday to discuss the new campus initiative to give civic engagement more publicity and accessibility on campus.
The groups' members hope to increase student participation by linking service organizations to the USG and creating liaisons within existing student groups.
USG president Rob Biederman '08 said he wants to make civic engagement activities a "365-day-a-year commitment" on the Princeton campus.
Visibility has been a problem for the Pace Center, the SVC and Community House, leaders of all three organizations have said. Though these organizations constantly arrange local and international projects, it has been a challenge to attract broad student involvement.
Some forces for spreading participation in civic engagement have already been set in motion. Recently named USG civic engagement chair Jacob Candelaria '09 has been in touch with the service organizations to promote involvement in community affairs.
Candelaria said he hopes to "find ways in which the USG can partner with the already existing civic engagement groups on campus" to facilitate communication and combine existing resources. He suggested the USG formulate an online resource with information about funding for service trips and international internships.
USG senator Rob Weiss '09 suggested that the Pace Center serve as a resource for startup student service groups. The center would periodically provide minor discretionary funding, "helping the Pace Center fulfill its promise and aiding the success of startup groups," he said in a written proposal.
By facilitating this partnership, Weiss added, student group leaders would be more effective at club management and more able to share resources and goals with the Pace Center.
"I saw that there's a really important need for the Pace Center to act as a hub of student groups that are civically engaged," he said.
Service group administrators and student leaders hope that increased cooperation between the USG and service groups will increase group visibility.
"Civic engagement is everywhere, and it's very hard to identify," Director of the Pace Center Kiki Jamieson said. The USG initiative aims to make service a "natural, normal part of Princeton," she added.
Jamieson said the center's difficult task was to fight the apparent campus attitude that civic engagement is "unusual, it's marginalized, it's something atypical to Princeton, something that happens at Brown or Stanford."
Community House director Marjorie Young said it is easy to overlook the importance of civic service in Princeton's immediate environs.
There is "a facade that Princeton is a very affluent community and nobody needs help," she said. Yet housing, education and poverty problems surround the campus, not only in urban centers like Trenton but "right here in the John Witherspoon area," Young added.
Additionally, the USG approved the Ivy Council's participation in an upcoming Ivy League conference on climate change. The universities will discuss ways to implement environmentally conscious policies on campus, such as energy efficiency.
USG members also discussed ways to reduce wasted resources during the upcoming USG election campaigns. The USG decided to decrease each candidate's poster maximum from 400 to 300 and charge five cents per poster in the hopes that candidates will post ads on facebook.com instead of littering the campus with papers.
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