{"id":2195,"date":"2016-03-28T17:05:12","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T17:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:47","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:47","slug":"profs-walk-the-talk-of-civic-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2016\/03\/28\/profs-walk-the-talk-of-civic-involvement\/","title":{"rendered":"Profs Walk the Talk of Civic Involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Paige<\/em>\u2014Professors Joyce Burnette and Ethan Hollander may not have won their respective races Crawfordsville City Council last fall, but both learned a great deal about themselves and their community. They hope their students will learn something, too.<\/p>\n

\"burnette\"\u201cFrom campaigning I learned that this town is full of people who care about their community,\u201d says Professor of Economics Burnette.\u00a0\u201cI learned that people are concerned with the quality of jobs available, and whether there are things for young people to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Associate Professor of Political Science Hollander learned how little it really takes to make a big difference in this community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a small place and every voice can count, but only if people are willing to get up and do something. Some of our city council races were decided by dozens\u2014not hundreds, and certainly not thousands\u2014of votes. That means that even just a small group of people could have changed the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The duo were part of a slate of Democratic candidates that increased dialogue citywide with competitive races in each ward. Knowing they\u2019d be campaigning with a solid team aided both political newcomers in the decision to run.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was willing to do it because I wasn\u2019t doing it alone,\u201d Burnette explains.\u00a0\u201cHaving five other Democrats run made the whole thing easier and more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollander praised the teamwork and the experience of walking the district and meeting voters together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t know how to campaign, but knowing that I’d be doing it alongside people like Joyce, Elizabeth Justice, and Mike Reidy [H\u201904] gave me the assurance that, when I had any questions, I’d have people to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollander\u2019s experience made him acutely aware that the city is far greater than the tight-knit academic community of the College.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot to love about Crawfordsville,\u201d says Hollander. \u201cBut we’ll never see that if we don’t look. And we’ll never look if we start out with unfounded assumptions about how intolerant, uninteresting, homogeneous, conservative, and closed-minded it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollander encourages his students to leave their preconceived notions behind, as well, and realize their potential to positively impact the community during their four years in Montgomery County.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope our running for office sends them the message that Crawfordsville is the city they live in, not just the city where their college is located. That’s a key difference, and if they realized it, it might encourage them to take advantage of what the city has to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Paige\u2014Professors Joyce Burnette and Ethan Hollander may not have won their respective races Crawfordsville City Council last fall, but both learned a great deal about themselves and their community. They hope […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":2196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-news-and-notes"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2016\/03\/hollander-ethan-4-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}