Findlay, Ohio, Feb. 12, 2004 — The University of Findlay’s Raise Your Voice Campaign will sponsor a videoconference to discuss “The New Student Politics: The Wingspread Statement on Student Civic Engagement Thursday, Feb. 19, at 1:30 p.m. in the TLB Auditorium, Winebrenner Theological Seminary.

“The New Student Politics” is a document created in response to the 2001 Wingspread Summit on Student Civic Engagement. This event, held at the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wis., was attended by 33 juniors and seniors from 27 colleges and universities. The students were nominated by faculty and community service directors and were asked to discuss their civic experiences in higher education.

“The New Student Politics” examines contemporary ideas of civic engagement, politics and community service. These ideas are applied to university, community, national and global environments.

The videoconference will offer UF students a chance to interact with other university students and to converse about the topics discussed in “The New Student Politics.”

Major talking points will include student frustration with conventional politics, non-traditional service action and the relevance of service learning as a part of the university curriculum.

Raise Your Voice is sponsored by Campus Compact and is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Raise Your Voice is a national campaign that hopes to establish a lasting student civic engagement program. The campaign objectives are to increase college student involvement in public life, to connect these actions with a larger national movement, to highlight activities and issues that are important to college students, to mobilize higher education to give students a stronger voice and to make civic engagement central to service learning.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Wayne Sneath, director of Campus Compact, at 419-434-5310 or at sneath@findlay.edu.