Four-year FYS eyes democracy
By David Irvine
Old Gold and Black Reporter

A group of 30 freshmen are currently participating in a new, four-year seminar called the Democracy Fellows Program. The program, sponsored by the communication and political science departments, concerns itself with deliberative democracy – a term used to describe how citizens express their political views.

After receiving a grant from the Kettering Foundation, Katy Harriger, a professor of political science, and Jill McMillan, a professor of communication, established the study, which aims not only to educate its students, but to track how they progress throughout the course of the Democracy Fellows Program.

“We are going to follow this group of students through their four years,” Harriger said. “Every year we will be comparing them to a randomly selected group of students from their class.”

All entering freshmen were provided with information and an application for admittance into the program.

“We were a little bit unsure of what response we would get, and so we were delighted when we got 60 applications out of that class,” McMillan said. “It enabled us to do exactly what we wanted to do, which was to align the class with the demographics of the class of 2005. Also, the thoughtfulness of their application, their backgrounds, their interests, the way they wrote about citizenship compelled us to take them or not.”

The 30 students are currently enrolled in either of two sections of the first year seminar Democracy and Deliberation, both co-taught by McMillan and Harriger.

“The basis for this is examining what citizenship means, and I hope it will broaden my perspective,” freshman Becca Cook said. “Deliberation is more examining the issues and putting aside your own beliefs a little bit so you can examine different viewpoints,” she said.

Plans have been made for the upcoming years in the program. Next year the participants will organize a campus deliberation, which will address an issue pertinent to the university. A community deliberation, concerning an issue of relevance to Winston-Salem, will follow in the students’ junior year.

“At this point Dr. Harriger and I are taking administrative roles as we teach them this, but as we move on through it, they are going to become more and more active in it, and do more and more themselves,” McMillan said. “One of the things that is fun about this course is that we’re game for anything. When an issue becomes important to us or the Winston-Salem community … it is an issue for discussion.”

The participants seem to be excited about being part of what has been described as a groundbreaking program, and pleased with how it will contribute to their education.
“This will improve my communication skills and make me a more politically active person, and perhaps a more politically minded person,” Phillips said.

“I have always been enamored with politics and democracy,” freshman Francesca Winkler explained. “You get to know these issues and learn how other people go through the process.”

While no official decision has been made to repeat the program on any type of regular basis, Harriger and McMillan say they are more than willing to entertain such ideas should the first go-around prove successful.

McMillan has high hopes for the future of the program here at the university. “If, indeed, it is as effective with college students as it seems to have been with adults, with a minimum amount of negative fallout, then certainly I think it is something we would try again and that Wake Forest might be interested in institutionalizing,” she said.