Civic Engagement + Public Policy and Social Change

Alexandra Martines

Educational Goals

            Though we seem to live in a civilized society, a first world country, America is not without its faults. Our people still go hungry, others face discrimination, and still more cannot even function in our highly educated society. According to “The Silent Epidemic,” every twenty-nine seconds, a student drops out of high school; More than one million American high school students drop out every year. It is estimated that 1 in 10 households in America goes hungry or is threatened by the possibility of hunger. Forty-four of our fifty states refuse to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. These facts may be disheartening to some, but to me they are motivating. While I know that I cannot singlehandedly fix the world, our country, or even a community, I also know that small groups of determined people have often led to great social change. However, the people that change the world are not conformists. They do not take the easy way out. They are leaders, people who seek out and synthesize the resources they need to create social justice and ease the burdens of those who go without. BDIC is where these people belong, and where I belong.          

  For my curriculum, I plan to follow the new Civ + X track. I will integrate courses from the Citizen Scholars Program, Anthropology, Sociology, Environmental Science, and Political Science. My curriculum will be based upon the above service learning model, uniting civic engagement, academic study, and practical experience. I am pulling from several different departments because the issues of public policy and social change are vast and cannot be explored in few disciplines. From the Sociology department, I will utilize courses that allow me to study social movements of the past in order to understand the diverse catalysts that lead to social change. Courses from the Anthropology department will give me a global perspective on possible solutions to our own country’s issues. The Environmental Science courses will provide me with relevant knowledge about sustainability and interconnectedness. The classes I take in the Political Science department will focus on public policy and the tools necessary to address social problems politically. The Citizen Scholars program and Grassroots Community Development and its subsequent courses will provide both theory and tools in a way that unites my diverse discipline in a cogent way.

Experiential Background

            I originally became interested in international issues of society during the “Save Nazanin” campaign that Amnesty International ran with Nazanin Afshin-Jam to free a woman in Iran who had been imprisoned for stabbing a man who attempted to sexually assault her and her cousin. That this woman was jailed for her actions and, without the intervention of several national agencies, most likely would have been hanged, astounded me. I thought I knew that nothing even resembling this incident could happen in the United States, so Nazanin’s trial seemed distant. Still, I was impassioned by her story; I signed the petition Amnesty International had created and spread the word to friends and family. However, that’s where my involvement ended. I thought that there was nothing substantial I could do about international injustice until I was much older. In my senior year of high school, I learned about the murder of Lawrence King. In the weeks prior to his murder, he had openly admitted to being gay. Another student shot him while in school and he died two days later. I had not known the extent of hate crimes in America, so I assumed this one was localized and highly unusual. As I grow older, I am becoming increasingly aware of discrimination and injustice and just how close it comes to my home, and that fact alone has motivated me to begin working within my own community, tackling the issues that exist within our country.

It was the middle of the Spring 2010 Semester when I began to ask myself what I was going to do about it. I was an English major at the time. While I loved my world of stories and grammar, my major left me feeling discontented. I sat reading books that many others had read before me, analyzing stanzas many others had already analyzed, but I wasn’t changing anything. I went in search of a more meaningful area of study. I applied to the Citizen Scholars Program, which opened my eyes to a whole word of social justice and service learning within our campus. There was a campus organization devoted solely to helping students get involved and make a difference! Still, I wanted to incorporate this learning into a major. I visited the Legal Studies office, but their approach was too legislation-focused for me and considered Political Science, but it dealt too little with actual human issues and too much with theory. I knew I wanted work within politics and social sciences. I loved the idea of majoring in community service and social issues, but I did not think a major in civic engagement existed. A few weeks later, I was looking for the Community Engagement Program office in Goodell and stumbled into the BDIC office. Shortly after, I found my major.

Continuing Aims

            Though I never have a complete picture of where I am headed, I am currently considering furthering my education as one of several possibilities. I do not have much experience with law, though I plan to pursue an internship with the on-campus Student Legal Services Office next year to learn whether law would be an apt career choice for me, as well as to gain experience in working for student’s rights. I have also become very interested in public policy as a career option in the future. I plan to immerse myself in public policy courses in the next three years and am pursuing the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship in order to learn more about public policy positions and graduate school. The graduate level Social Justice Education Department at UMass is equally appealing, as I have been convinced for the majority of my young life that I want to teach in some way, shape, or form. Their small class sizes and emphasis on equality draw me.

            Should graduate schooling not turn out to hold my future career, I am researching positions within AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps. As of now, my whole self yearns for travel, so the Peace Corps Youth Development program may prove to be more fitting. Those are generally only programs over a few years, however, so I am also looking into positions at Amnesty International. With my focus on public policy developing, I am starting to see myself remaining within the United States to work on domestic issues rather than international affairs, so the AmeriCorps program is beginning to look incredibly interesting, as well as Teach For America. I still have a lot left to figure out, but I have three years left to do some figuring and plenty of options. 

Comments

[BDIC]

A very thoughtful and moving proposal! Dan Gordon