Democracy isn’t easy.
That’s what Connie Book, president of Elon University, reminded the audience at the Greensboro Newsmakers event held at The Pyrle downtown Monday evening.
“What we’re trying to accomplish in the United States, with a democracy that’s vibrant, that has the richness of the diversity of viewpoint, is hard,” Book said. “It’s hard, and it’s hard work, and it requires skill sets that we don’t innately have.”
But that work is easier when you know the challenges.
More than 150 people—business leaders, elected officials, academics, students, and young professionals—came together for Monday’s event to consider some big questions about civic health.
What role should higher education play in preparing engaged citizens?
What can local communities learn from our colleges and universities, where real dialogue happens, and ideas can turn into action?
What are students doing to create the world in which they want to live?
At the event hosted by Action Greensboro, The Assembly and The Thread, university presidents, area college students, and the audience shared their personal experiences as they tackled those questions.
The panel discussion, led by The Assembly’s Greensboro Editor Joe Killian and Regional Editor Emily McCord, included Book, Elon University student Anya Bratić, N.C. A&T State University Chancellor Emeritus Harold Martin and N.C. A&T student Terrence Olu Rouse.
Leslie Garvin, executive director of North Carolina Campus Engagement, opened the event with a lay of the land, sharing findings from the 2024 North Carolina Civic Health Index.
North Carolina ranks high in personal relationships with family and friends, community relationships, and collaborations with neighbors, the data shows. But from there, things take a dip. The state ranked lower voting, participation in local politics, news consumption, and discussing politics with others.
When looking at self-reported data, North Carolina ranked 51st of 51 in voter registration, at 60.8% of respondents (compared with the national average of 69.1%). Actual voter registration data from the NC State Board of Elections for the 2022 election paints a better picture, however, with with 69.7% of those eligible being registered to vote.
When it comes to engaging with elected officials, the study found that North Carolina ranks last.
Ongoing cuts to civic education within K-12 schools threaten to make those problems worse.
So what to do?
The Triad has a unique opportunity to engage the next generation of civic-minded people, the panelists said.
“Many people think that the majority of college students in North Carolina are over in the Raleigh, Chapel Hill area,” Book said. “But Chancellor Martin and I know that the majority of college students in North Carolina are in this Triad space. So this question is really germane to this area.”
Across the city, there are seven major colleges and universities: University of North Carolina at Greensboro, N.C. A&T State University, Guilford College, Greensboro College, Bennett College, Guilford Technical Community College, and Elon University School of Law.
But even before students get to college, the mission of civic engagement can start in the home.
Starting at Home
“[My father] always ensured that my older brother, sister, and I always participated,” Martin told the audience Monday. “We were always part of the conversation.”
Martin was raised under segregation, he said. His father never shielded their children from the complexities and challenges of being Black in America.
“We were learning as we went,” Martin said. “He always shared around the table during dinnertime, conversations for us to be involved in, challenged us to ask tough questions, always challenged us to look for solutions.”
Decades later, Rouse would have a similar experience.
“Learning from my parents, being educated about Civil Rights history and where I come from as an African-American man,” Rouse said. “I think that’s one of the things that propelled me into it all.”
For Bratić, car rides in her childhood weren’t filled with rock or pop music, they were filled with the voices of NPR reporters.
“I really do thank my parents a lot for that,” said Bratić, whose father immigrated to the U.S. from Bosnia during wartime in the 1990s. “It allowed me to see that there’s a world outside. That there are things that are happening outside of our small hometown community and beyond.”
Children who are civically engaged early can continue that learning once in college, Book said. It’s just about making sure they have the tools to stay civically minded.
“I’m a big believer that civic engagement…is a skill set that has to be taught,” Book said. “We don’t wake up knowing how to be civically engaged…just like riding a bicycle, it has to be taught.”
‘Creating On-Ramps For Students’
During Martin’s 15-year tenure at A&T, he and the faculty worked hard on a speaker series for students. But when they hosted the events, he told the audience Monday, only about half of the auditorium filled up—mostly with faculty and staff.
“In the post survey of the event, students said, ‘We weren’t interested in that topic,’” Martin said. “‘You didn’t ask us what we were interested in.’ So we began to inquire.”
From then on, Martin said, the events became standing-room-only.
The answer was simple: Ask students what they wanted to learn about.
At Elon University, Book takes a similar approach. The university centers campus conversations on hot-button current events like the Iran conflict.
The goal in both cases was to engage students on their perspectives, on the issues that matter most to them. That creates on-ramps for students to engage civically, Book said.
When given those opportunities, both Book and Martin said, students will surprise you—and make you proud.
“You often hear negative comments about the young people in our society,” Martin said. “I don’t share that perspective.”
Book agreed.
“You would feel a whole lot hopeful about the future after you engage with a few young people,” Book said. “And we’re constantly learning from them.”
Small Starts, Big Changes
At both A&T and Elon, students are finding new ways to get engaged.
Rouse is heavily involved in voter engagement. Earlier this year, he and other Aggies spent months advocating for a polling place on campus for this year’s primary election. While the Guilford County Board of Elections didn’t fulfil the group’s request, Rouse said they’re going to keep pushing for a site for the fall. Their efforts weren’t in vain, he said.
Rouse and others garnered enough attention to fund a small shuttle that transported students back and forth from the campus to the downtown polling site during the election.
At Elon, Bratić helped create a town hall that aimed to bring more of the Alamance County community onto campus. She found an organization called CrossRoads, which helps survivors of sexual assault, and invited them to campus. It was then that Bratić learned that a small group of young women started the organization in 1976 after a Black woman was raped by a white police officer. The women began advocating for her case, and eventually, the organization was formed.
Rouse’s voter engagement efforts, Bratić’s creation of the town hall, and CrossRoads’ formation pointed to a theme that was interwoven throughout the evening.
“A lot of things start with very small changes,” Rouse said towards the end of the event. “As André 3000 said, ‘Big things start in small rooms,’ so that’s what we’re doing.”
Both Bratić and Rouse acknowledged their generation faces unique challenges to civic engagement from social media and a 24/7 news cycle to a pervasive feeling of isolation.
“Young people have access to a lot more information than older generations,” Rouse said. “And what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard from other students is that it almost has communicated this hopelessness…. And they feel like no matter what they do, they won’t have an impact on what’s going on…and I think that’s often misunderstood as apathy.”
But the solution starts in rooms not unlike the Pyrle on Monday evening.
“Bring students into that room where they can have that space to have dialogue,” Rouse said. “It’s still crazy to me to see how that can change a student’s perspective.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to make the distinction between self-reported data and data from the NC State Board of Elections on voter registration data in the 2024 North Carolina Civic Health Index.