To start, could you talk about the mission of the Princeton College Democrats and what work you’re engaging in on campus?
Our tagline is “bring blue values to the Orange Bubble”. And part of our mission is certainly to promote the Democratic Party, Democratic values and Democratic candidates on campus. But, frankly, we both know that they don’t need a ton of help on campus in terms of support. A lot of Princeton students lean blue or left of blue, so I think there are a few other things. One big one is actually turning out Princeton students to vote. Voter participation in general and Democratic participation in primaries and smaller elections, off-years and midterms are all really important. Another thing is connecting Princeton students with volunteer opportunities on campaigns. During election cycles—you’ll see this in the fall—we run a ton of phone banks, canvassing opportunities, and letter writing events to volunteer for campaigns.
The other thing is education and general participation. For instance, we host other student groups at our meetings, and they present to us and inform our members about issues and campaigns. We also line up speakers so we can connect our members with cool officials, campaign staffers, that kind of stuff.
Could you talk about some of the goals of the College Democrats for the upcoming 2022 midterms?
That’s a great question. One thing that we know is that our members’ time is super valuable, and we don’t want to spend it doing frivolous stuff. We are looking at targeting opportunities that are both fun and interesting for our members to participate in and very high value. At this week’s meeting on the 22nd, we’re going to be writing letters that will be sent out in October of this year to voters in swing states, encouraging them in a nonpartisan way to vote because we think, and the data supports this, that’s a very high efficacy thing to do. Also, we’re going to be targeting really hot races, like the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, Pennsylvania Senate seat, Tom Malinowski in NJ-7, Andy Kim in NJ-3, high-value races on which a lot of policy could turn on very few votes. We’re going to exert our effort there, doing phone banking and also canvasing. That’s kind of what we’re looking at for this year.
What other plans do you have for the upcoming spring semester?
One thing that we try to avoid is endorsing candidates in the primary because we want to be a home for all Democrats on campus and even people who aren’t Democrats, who are just kind of curious or centrist or left of Democrats. And we think that in a lot of cases, endorsing candidates is not winning them a ton of votes but could alienate us from people who may be interested in joining. So it is hard to do campaign stuff this early. We are doing these letters, which we then hold onto until October to send out. But another thing we’re excited about is speaking events, bringing in elected officials, campaign officials, or staffers and having them talk about their experiences to our members because they’re all interested in politics, too. I think that’s valuable.
The other thing I’m really excited about is looking at some service projects, completely nonpartisan, which is a way to engage our members in the local community. First, because I think it’s a valuable and, frankly, fun thing to do, but also because I think a lot of political repair, the way that we’re going to fix our nation’s politics, is by focusing on local engagement and participation and feeling connected to something that isn’t just abstract, highly partisan, polarized national politics. I’m really looking forward to doing some local engagement and having our members do substantive, valuable things that aren’t necessarily partisan.
Are there particular policy issues you’re focusing on?
That completely depends on the year. Generally, we’re not super attached to one issue. That’s a year-to-year thing, but not now.
Could you talk about the effect of COVID-19 on organizing on campus? Has it had a big effect?
Yeah, I would say that it’s less fun to do it with COVID. This is something that happened across, I assume, both parties but certainly the Democratic Party. I volunteered for a few campaigns and worked for a few campaigns in 2020, and grappling with COVID was a really big challenge because it is like, “oh, am I comfortable going up to people’s houses and canvassing, or even having in-person phone banks or letter writing?” A lot of 2020 was really difficult because we would be in our rooms at home, on Zoom and phone banking. That was pretty draining, and I think it led to lower engagement.
Another thing, and I’m sure the Prog has seen this too, is across the board, maybe save dance groups and the Prince, participation in extracurriculars is down, and that’s definitely true for us. It’s harder to get people excited about doing what is, really, work. Campaigning is work, and we’ve been without what makes it really valuable, which is spending time with the people you’re working with and with other College Dems. That’s definitely been difficult. There are ways to work around it, but I think in the midterms I’m really excited to do in-person stuff that we haven’t been able to do, like driving to communities and canvassing, or meeting all together in Whig Hall and doing phone banks or writing letters. That’s all really good stuff that I’m looking forward to doing again.
Could you talk about what you think is unique about our position as college students, and Princeton students in particular, in relation to the Democratic Party and national politics?
That’s interesting. This is something I’ve had to think about as president this year, which is that I feel like a lot of national political discourse is tedious and unproductive, or overly inflammatory and enraged. We’re here at this college to learn and to be able to evaluate policies and positions and current events, if not objectively, then at least through our own viewpoint. And I think that bringing national political parties onto campus runs the risk of framing everything within the Twitter, MSNBC, standard issue Democratic framing. That’s something I don’t want to do. We are here to learn and build our own viewpoints about the world, and I think that negative partisanship on campus is not productive.
That’s the reason why I’m focusing on the local level. There is a perception that Princeton is a college town, everyone who goes here is liberal or left of liberal, so what value does local engagement have? I think, first of all, just because it votes blue doesn’t mean that the town of Princeton or Mercer County pursue the policies that we may want. And focusing on the local level helps combat negative partisanship by framing politics not as a red versus blue, left versus right thing but as “this is how this local issue affects people, and this is how I’m going to engage with it to engage both sides.” I think that’s the productive thing to do. Frankly, it’s hard to do, especially in COVID. I can’t say that we’ve figured out a formula yet.
In general, that’s how I like to think about our position as College Democrats. Not as a mouthpiece for the national party, although we will volunteer for the national party and support national candidates and all of that, but rather as an organization that is attempting to fortify small-d democratic participation and engagement in a productive way on campus.
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