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Campus Progress: A New Generation of Campus Activism

Published on August 17, 2006

It's no secret that if you want to reach out to today's youth, the same old brochures just aren't going to cut it. This is a media-savvy generation, used to interacting with people all over the world via sites like MySpace and Facebook, and accustomed to uploading and watching media of all kinds on sites like YouTube and Google Video. It should come as no surprise then, that now more than ever, groups who want to spark youth activism are turning to non-print media to motivate action. Campus Progress is a case in point.

Campus Progress is dedicated to empowering a new generation of progressive leaders.

A project of the Center for American Progress, Campus Progress is dedicated to empowering a new generation of progressive leaders. Launched in February of 2005, Campus Progress was founded as a response to highly effective organizing by conservative groups like Young America's Foundation, the Inter-Collegiate Studies Institute, and the Leadership Institute, which have together spent more than $35 million a year over the past 30 years waging a campaign to empower young conservative leaders. "The Progressive Movement was doing nothing to invest in the future," Campus Progress Director David Halperin explains; Campus Progress aims to change this.

How? According to Halperin, Campus Progress has three main strategies for making a difference: bringing people together to build a movement, using new media and finding new ways to tell stories, and focusing on what students want. As such, while Campus Progress does take advantage of more traditional ways of encouraging student activism (such as partnering with progressive campus publications nationwide), it is also committed to using non-print media, such as the internet and film, to draw in and unite a younger crowd around social issues.

By creating what amounts to a multimedia magazine online at CampusProgress.org, complete with streaming videos of events, free mp3 downloads and a series of active blogs where visitors can make comments, as well as by screening social-issue films in Washington DC and on campuses around the country, Campus Progress is tapping into a new wave in campus activism and bringing it into the modern age.

What defines this new wave? "Students are trying out new ways to express themselves," explains Halperin. According to him, these new modes of expression have two major manifestations: a newfound pragmatism and a focus on "new media." The pragmatism refers to the way students approach social change. Rather than setting out to save the world, they are taking smaller, more manageable steps -- getting their schools to divest from Sudan, for example.

This new emphasis on pragmatism is one reason why student activists and organizations like Campus Progress are concentrating on non-print media. Video and the web are "the ways people communicate now," Halperin explains. In order to get people involved, activists must "meet people where they are."

The Reel Progress film series

brings films and dialogue to student activists.

Of course, pragmatism lends itself to non-print media in more ways than one. Publishing online is a great alternative for a publication free of commercial advertising, in large part because it is cheap. "No one can afford to give away a print magazine," Halperin explains, adding, "The web is a great opportunity to have a national publication."

Affordability might seem to be reason enough for Campus Progress to develop an online magazine and to encourage its partner publications to do the same, but there are other, more important reasons as well. Online content has the potential to reach a wider and more geographically diverse audience. CampusProgress.org has had over 2 million visitors from around the country since it was created 15 months ago. Additionally, features like blogs provide a forum for discussion, fostering a sense of community and offering, as Halperin puts it, "a place where anybody can speak their minds." Of course, you can't just hand a website to someone the way you can hand them a newspaper, but with the frequency with which college students these days go online, you don't have to.

Pragmatism is a good argument for using film as a means to get students involved as well. Halperin explains that at Campus Progress they believe in using all available resources to reach people, and that includes showcasing celebrities and high-profile films that tackle social issues. Campus Progress (in conjunction with the Center for American Progress) has hosted screenings of such big-name films as Good Night, and Good Luck, Crash and Akeelah and the Bee. These screenings, as part of the Reel Progress film series, are followed by panel discussions with policy experts, filmmakers and actors, and they tend to draw large crowds. It's not all about the celebrities, however. In Halperin's words, "We draw people out with sizzle, then give them something substantive." At the screenings, people begin to talk about the issues, and that is the whole point.

Certainly, a film doesn't have to be quite so high-profile to get people talking, and Campus Progress realizes this. Renowned, but less commercial documentaries, such as The War Tapes, The Education of Shelby Knox and The Untold Story of Emmett Till have also been screened at Reel Progress, and Arts Engine's issue-oriented Media That Matters Film Festival has screened there for the past two years to enthusiastic crowds.

Even young filmmakers have gotten the chance to have their films shown (as with Steven Greenstreet's This Divided State), much to the pride of Halperin and the rest of the staff at Campus Progress. Fortunately, organizations are invited to host a screening of Reel Progress films on their own campuses, and so the debate doesn't end at Campus Progress' headquarters in DC (so far about 40 such campus screenings have been held). Campus Progress has found that film can be a powerful tool for raising awareness of issues. "Besides," Halperin tacks on, "all of us like film anyway."

A panel discussion followed a screening of the Media That Matters Film Festival at Campus Progress headquarters in Washington DC.

So, what's next for Campus Progress? Halperin assures us that they will continue to use media innovatively to spark campus activism. They have recently developed a program that will allow their partner campus publications to easily upload and share content online. Additionally, they aim to expand their use of short film in particular by streaming more short video clips of their events online, and widely screening three Public Service Announcements created for them by a major advertising company as part of their campaign to end student debt.

Of course, Campus Progress still has a long way to go before it is able to build the truly nationwide community it aims for (Halperin admits Campus Progress' influence is significantly greater on the East Coast), and, since it is such a young organization, Campus Progress is still far behind its conservative counterparts in this arena. And there's certainly more to be done to actively encourage student activists to use film in their own efforts to create change. Campus Progress is a leader in the effort to create a cohesive, progressive youth movement, and an excellent illustration of how a new generation media-savvy advocacy organization can reach a new generation of media-savvy campus activists.