Power and Powerlessness

Name: Steven Brint

Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy

More than a dozen years ago I taught a course on "Power." It was a relatively small course, about 50 students. I tried hard to stimulate class discussion, but typically to no avail. With rare exceptions, students would not talk. One day I asked how many students had voted in the last presidential election. Only a few hands went up. I was surprised and dismayed. "Those of you who did not vote," I asked, "why did you decide not to vote?" There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. Finally, a woman in the back of the classroom raised her hand and said, "Because nothing that happens in Washington has an impact on people like me, and we can't do anything about it." "Do you mean," I said, "that you don't know anyone who has family fighting in Iraq, that you don't know anyone who has received federal financial aid to attend the university?" She admitted that she had. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Those people don't care about people like me." By the tone of her voice, I knew that she was angry about it. Many in the class nodded in agreement. Her alienation seemed to symbolize the attitude of the class as a whole. I realized then that my teaching would have to try to instill a sense of agency as much as content knowledge. I wanted to identify and create models of engagement for students and situations in which passivity would not be an option.

In subsequent years as a university administrator I devoted much of my time to creating situations in which academic engagement would occur -- through numerous teaching improvement efforts, through starting small seminar programs such as capstones, through designing the Leadership Pathway Program and the Chancellor's Research Fellows, through providing funds for new undergraduate research opportunities, and in many other ways. I met many inspiring and deeply engaged students who participated in these programs, and I believe the efforts of my team (and the college deans with whom we worked) made at least a sizable dent on the problem of student passivity and alienation. Feelings build over many years and I had been thinking about issues in undergraduate education long before I taught the "Power" course, but that discomfiting exchange with the woman in the back of my classroom sparked a sense of urgency which I could not shake and still feel.

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