Study: Students choose volunteerism over politics
By Bill Delaney/CNN
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In Harvard Yard, that younger generation, you may have heard, is only interested in money.
Here, though, everybody's in training to be an unpaid camp counselor: volunteering their time to do good works, as do fully three out of five college students, according to a new national survey.
What 90 percent of the students were not interested in was spending time on politics.
College students are disillusioned, distrustful, often downright disgusted about politics, according to a new study, conducted here at Harvard by the Institute of Politics.
85 percent of students say they prefer community volunteerism to political engagement.
Less than 10 percent of students say they have taken part -- or plan to take part -- in a political campaign this year.
Harvard undergraduates Erin Ashwell and Trevor Dryer spearheaded the national survey of their contemporaries' attitudes.
"We're interested in making positive change in our community, in our nation. The problem is that we just don't see politics as a way to do that," Ashwell said. "Overwhelmingly, students in the survey told us that they see politicians and politics as something that's self-serving, and they're turning away from that."
What concerns the young -- education, the environment, our violent culture -- the authors of the study say just aren't what politicians seem concerned about.
"The same old rhetoric you hear time and time again," said student Trevor Dryer. "There's a lot of talk about Social Security and Medicare -- and you know, young people don't think they're ever going to die -- let alone be retired someday."
Let alone, expend time now to gradually pave a way to political power.
"Technology has provided a lot of people in college, or young people in general, the chance to you know, go out and start on their own, start creative projects, start a Web business, you know, manage a hedge fund - things like that," Dryer explained.
So much for ringing doorbells.
"They see more results for example when they go to a soup kitchen, or they tutor -- they see the actual difference that they're making in the community," he added.
The Clinton administration many students grew up with is widely seen as diminished by sandal, and this summer's political conventions appear to be utterly pre-scripted.
So what's a politician to do?
The grown-up pollster who helped the students says that politicians need to inspire and show people politics can be fun.
"What motivates young people to get involved in things ... 94-percent are motivated by enjoyment of the activity. And 7-percent said that politics was fun," said pollster John Della Volpe.
Making politics fun. Wouldn't that throw an awful lot of candidates off-message?
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