What Does it Mean to be an Active Citizen?
In life we are told to be good and conscious members of our community and to help others out when that help is needed. But, when you look at your community as a whole, is it really okay to only be a good member or should we strive to be something better such as an active citizen? And is there really a difference between the two? Well, there actually is a vast difference between a good or conscious member of a community and an active citizen of one. Although there is no set definition of what it takes to become an active citizen, and a lot of it can be left to interpretation, there are a couple of factors as to what it takes to really be an active citizen.
One of the main things that it takes to be an active citizen is awareness. Being aware of what is going on in your community sounds like a given to be any sort of active citizen but it is not as simple as it may sound. There is a huge difference between keeping up with the news and knowing what is going on vs. understanding what is actually going on and thinking about it and processing the information. Believe it or not, not everything that we hear from the news or the internet is one hundred percent true. Most of the stories that you hear are biased and don’t actually cover the entire story. So it would make sense that just reading one paper or listening to one story wouldn’t make you an active citizen. Doing so would make you aware of the problem at hand, but you would not know the entire story. It is so important to fully understand what is going on in your community and in doing so you are on your way to becoming an active citizen.
Another really important aspect of being an active citizen is knowing and understanding the social change model. The social change model is a great reference to use to see how well of an active citizen you are becoming. The model is made up of the seven C’s: Consciousness of self, Congruence, Commitment, Collaboration, Common Purpose, Controversy with Civility and Citizenship. To be ab active citizen you have to know and be able to dissect these seven C’s and be able to relate them to your life. The first C is Consciousness of self. You have to be able to recognize your goals and be aware of why you are doing what you are doing before you can be an active citizen. Like stated before, you have to be aware of what is going on in your community, but that isn’t the only major thing that you should know. You have to know why you are doing what you are doing because if you are doing things for the wrong reasons than you aren’t truly an active citizen. The second C is Congruence. This means being honest and genuine when dealing with others and being consistent with those actions. If you don’t act with congruence, then it is really hard to be taken serious as an active citizen or a leader and you will not be able to fully commit to being an active citizen. The third C is Commitment. You have to decide what is most important to you and find an action that you can take to pursue that and then you have to commit to that. The fourth C is Collaboration. When working in a community you are going to have to deal with other members of the community while talking and debating with them. In situations like these, it is essential that you need to work together easily and peacefully come to solutions. To be able to collaborate with each other effectively is a huge part of being an active citizen because it allows you to be able to communicate easily which is also a huge characteristic of a leader. The fifth C is Common Purpose. This means to work together in a group with the same motive or purpose for your work. When you work there is always some sort of motive pushing you to do greater and go farther, but when working in a group it is much greater to have a common purpose pushing you all to do greater. The sixth C is Controversy with Civility. When working together in a group it is inevitable that you will have opposing opinions and disagree on certain aspects but you have to have to act civil when referencing your opinion. Sometimes it is hard to not bring heat to a situation that you are so passionate about, but it is necessary to remain calm and listen to other viewpoints and come to an agreement peacefully. The seventh C is Citizenship. Citizenship is one of the most important aspects of the social change model because it is extremely important to show citizenship in your community. There is no way whatsoever that you could be an active citizen without showing a great deal of citizenship. Citizenship is showing that you are truly connected to your community through your work and everything that you do in your everyday lives. These seven C’s of the social change model are all characteristics of an active citizen and someone must possess all of these in order to call themselves one (Mode).
The Active Citizen Continuum is a tool that one can use to determine if they are an active citizen. This continuum describes a citizen all the way from a member on the far left all the way to an active citizen on the far right. A member of a community is someone who lives in the community but does not do much to help their community. These are people who are not necessarily bad people, but they just do not devote some of their time to volunteer or give back to their community through service and they are not concerned with their role in the issues surrounding their community. The next part of the chain is a volunteer which is just right from a member. A volunteer gives their time back to their community in order to better it and tries to help out where they can. They understand where their community needs help and does something in order to help their community, but they are not necessarily properly informed what is going on. They may know the problem but they do not necessarily understand what is actually going on or what is the underlying cause and how to actually fix the problem. The next step over from a volunteer and one away from an active citizen is a conscientious citizen. A conscientious citizen is someone who is a volunteer but is also concerned with the root causes of the problem and asks why they occur. They try to understand the reasons that these problems in their community are occurring and give their time in an effort to try to fix the problems that arise. Finally, at the end of the continuum is an active citizen which is the same as a conscientious citizen except for an active citizen brings up these problems as a priority in their life and devotes a great deal of their life trying to find solutions and make others aware of these problems. This continuum is an amazing tool to use to determine where you lie as a citizen in your community and to make you aware of the difference that you are making within it (Davidson, Alastair).
One idea by Peter Block for helping to become more of an active citizen was to focus more on Citizenship than Leadership. In his words, “A benefit of shifting from Leadership to Citizenship is to create the capacity for many more people to achieve what we have traditionally expected our leaders to accomplish. Servant-leadership may provide a gateway for this transition” (Block, Peter). He mentioned that he was not arguing against leadership, but that instead he felt that we spend so much time focusing on it that we do not take enough effort towards citizenship. He explains that leadership is a fad and that it is seen as something up on a pedestal and it is the ultimate goal for some people. With this, everyone has their sights set on one thing and then no one is focusing on the more important things in the community. When we focus more on citizenship than leadership, we give everyone a possibility to shine in their community. With this Block states that it is possible for everyone to “create and articulate a vision, be accountable for the well-being of the whole, set and pursue goals that sustain the institution, establish boundaries and set limits, create structure and order that suits our purpose, and to become a role model” (Block, Peter). With this approach, we are able to spend more time investing in more people and thus making more people aware of what is going on and therefore training more people to become active citizens.
At Virginia Tech I believe that we do a great job at working towards becoming active citizens, but nobody is perfect and we are all far from it. Our school motto is “Ut Prosim” and we are encouraged to embrace it as a way of life, but has that actually come to a reality? Sadly, the answer is no. Not everyone on campus is actively involved in our community and trying to better it and a great deal of the ones that do are only doing it because they have to for a fraternity, sorority, club, organization, etc. A lot of people on campus do not feel the need to understand what is going on in their community and could not be bothered to be educated about it. But, that is not everybody. A great deal of people actually does go out and get involved and do their part to better the campus and community of Blacksburg. These people are the people who do truly embrace and reflect our school motto of “Ut Prosim”. These people try to educate others with what is going on in the community and I would actually place them as an active citizen on the Active Citizen Continuum. They have devoted a good deal of their lives here on campus to serving their community, learning about the issues that are going on within it and educating as many as they can about those issues. At Virginia Tech, I feel that we have a great deal of volunteers and some members, conscientious citizens and active citizens sprinkled within everyone else. Like in every community, there are always going to be the people that feel that they have no reason to participate or give back to their community. These people do not understand nor care about their role in their community and decide to do nothing to participate within it. These people are definitely in the minority though. I would say that Virginia Tech has done a great job though because I can easily say without a doubt that our percentage of those students on campus here is lower than most colleges around the country. One of the biggest reasons for this is the Big Event in April of every year. This event engages the majority of our students in some sort of service for the community. It definitely does not make every student aware of the problems that are currently facing our community, much less make everyone an active citizen, but it does put them one step closer to becoming a conscientious citizen. These people may not understand what exactly the problem is that they are trying to help or the root cause of these problems, but they are making an effort to serve their community and that is at least an effort in trying to be an active citizen in their community.
I believe that we could do a better job in our community to get more people aware of the problems facing it. There are people trying to make this happen, but they are not reaching out to as many people as they could be. I believe that at Virginia Tech we have one of the greatest resources for this to happen and that is the Big Event. As stated before, many people do go to the Big Event in an effort to serve their community, but for many people this is some of the only service that they do each year and they are unaware of the reasons that they doing the service and the root causes of the problem affecting it. One thing that we could do to change this is to inform people more during the Big Event and not only tell people the what the problem is, but educate them about what the cause of the problem was and how they can have a part in helping fix the main cause. If we gave people more options to keep up with their service and to come back and help serve a greater cause which would in turn further help the service that they did during the Big Event then more people would remain involved after the Big Event was over. I believe that Ut Prosim is a way of life, but not everyone uses it that way. They serve once or twice and say that they have embraced their school motto, but it is much more than that. Ut Prosim should be a way that you live and you should think about what can you do to serve others and your community every single day. I believe that educating more people during the Big Event that we can reach out to a greater number of people and get them to further understand the problems facing our community and realize the importance of our school motto and use it to serve as a way of life for them.
At the beginning of the semester I thought that I would have considered myself an active citizen because I did a lot of community service and I went to meetings with my local group that I volunteered with and learned about what was going on in the community and how I could help serve it. But looking back I know that I would only put myself as a volunteer. I only somewhat knew what was going on in my community through that group and was only exposed to those problems that I helped serve at. I may have done a lot of community service, but I would only do the service and then go home and not think much about it again. I never really got invested in any project other than 4-H camp and I didn’t ever check up with my service afterwards. I still had a lot to learn about service even though I did not know it. A great part of the reason that I was doing service was because I needed to for the clubs I was in or because it would look good on my resume or even just for the self-satisfaction of knowing that I helped serve which are all wrong reasons for doing service. Since I have been taking this community engagement class, I have become so much more aware of my place in my community and how I should be participating within it. I have learned how to reflect on a project that I have done and to analyze it through the “What? So What? Now What?” model which has greatly impacted my service over the semester. Now I thoroughly think through all of the service that I do and analyze to see how it is really helping our community. I have also become more aware of the problems that face my community and what I can do to have a part in fixing them. I have learned that not all service is good and that some service can actually be harmful to the community around it and that is why it is so important to reflect on my service afterwards. But one of the greatest things that I have learned that I had no idea about before I entered this class is that service should also benefit the volunteer. This was one of the most surprising things that I have learned this semester, but it has proved to be very true.
Now at the end of the semester, I would consider myself a conscientious citizen. I know the problems facing my community and what I can do to fix them and I ask why these problems arise. I try to find out the root causes to these problems and figure out what can be done to fix them. I am working towards becoming closer to an active citizen and making most of the decisions in my life based on my community’s needs and my service. I am really excited to start this next semester and see what other service I am going to be able to do. I have participated in College Mentors for Kids throughout the entirety of the fall semester and am excited to return with it next semester. I am setting some goals for myself to have been done by May and I am hoping that I will be able to reflect on these and be happy with how far I have come from now until then. First, I want to do some sort of service during my time off from school during winter and spring break. I really do not want to get used to being back home and sitting around doing nothing; I want to keep up with my service and hopefully devote about two hours each week like I have been here at school. Second, I also want to keep up with current events more and be more aware of not only what is going on around my community, but what is going around in the world as a whole. Lastly, I want to up my hours of service next semester. I would like to double what I have done this semester but I’m not sure if that is actually realistic when school is added into the equation. Either way, I am hoping to work my way up to becoming much more of an active citizen next semester.
In all, it takes a lot to be an active citizen, but it not impossible. Active Citizens are leaders that we should look up to and it should be something that everyone should strive to become. I myself and in the process of working to becoming one and hope to someday devote my life to service and my community and to live my life embracing Ut Prosim.
Work Cited
"Peter Block - Servant-Leadership." Peter Block - Servant-Leadership. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.
Davidson, Alastair. "The Active Citizen and Beyond." From Subject to Citizen (n.d.): 217-22. Web.
Mode, About The. The Social Change Model of Leadership Development (n.d.): n. pag. Web.