If you see more civic engagement on your campus this semester around the issue of voting in state and national elections, you can thank Congress and the 1998 Higher Education Act for some of the activity. The act requires all postsecondary institutions to make a good faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to every student prior to the state's voter registration deadlines. In response, a consortium of 49 higher education associations has pulled out all the stops and mailed an organizing handbook to every college president.

In another campaign, organized by a consortium of 55 youth groups under the banner of Youth Vote 2000, organizers are mounting a variety of activities during the campaign season. In January, they called on candidates to hold a special youth debate on the issues that most concern the young adult and college crowd. Through Rock the Vote, which is a coalition member, organizers provide an online registration site at www.rockthevote.org. Founded in 1990, Rock the Vote achieved the highest youth voter turnout in recent history during the 1992 elections.

These targeted efforts could not come at a better time, says one public policy group. In a poll of college students conducted last November, the Mellman Group found a high level of interest in public service and volunteer work, but low interest in getting involved in politics or in voting. Seventy-three percent of 800 students surveyed said they had done volunteer work to help the homeless, tutor, or work to improve the environment and health care. Yet only 25 percent said they would want to spend their volunteer time working in politics. On the other hand, college students do vote: Forty-nine percent of college graduates voted in 1996; 39 percent of undergraduates voted, compared with just 22 percent of high school graduates.

Remind your students to vote.

Strong economy leads to stark inequities

The higher the stock market soars, the more reports come out documenting the extraordinary gap that yaws ever wider between the wealthiest fraction of American society and the rest of us.

For example, in 1989, the U.S. had 66 billionaires and 31.5 million people living below the official poverty line ($13,000 for a family of three). At the end of the prosperous, record-breaking 1990s, we have 268 billionaires and 34.5 million people living below the poverty line, says a United for a Fair Economy report. As the 21st century begins, the top 1 percent of households has more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent. Or, to look at it another way, according to the UFE report "Divided Decade: Economic Disparity at the Century's Turn," (available at www.stw.org/html/divided_decade.html) the 400 richest Americans are worth a total of $1 trillion, or one-ninth of the total U.S. gross domestic product. They have as much wealth as the 50 million families at the bottom half of the population.

While the top 1 percent was thriving in the '90s, most workers' wages were stagnating. The inflation-adjusted net worth of the median household fell from $54,600 in 1989 to $49,900 in 1997. On the other hand, productivity has been on the rise, increasing 46.5 percent since 1973. Who reaped the benefits? CEOs for one: The gap between their pay and that of workers is five times wider than it was at the start of the Õ90s and 10 times wider than it was 20 years ago. "Divided Decade" cites a Business Week article, which says that CEOs at large companies made 85 times the pay of average factory workers in 1990. By the end of the decade, the gap was 419 times the pay of workers.

Meanwhile, consumer debt--mostly in credit cards--has more than tripled in the past decade; personal savings dropped to 2 percent last year--down from a range of 7 percent to 11 percent in the 1960s; and total bankruptcies have doubled since 1990.

Another report, released jointly in January by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, compares the growing gap between rich and poor by state over the past 25 years. "Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends," which is based on U.S. Census data, shows that the gap widened most in New York state, where the poorest families lost $2,900 in real income while the richest families gained $108,000 per family. Commenting on the report to the New York Times, Edward N. Wolff, a New York University professor of economics, noted: "Generally what's happening in the U.S. economy is that capital is what's being rewarded, and not labor."

"The report shows that with few exceptions, economic growth in the 50 states has not been broadly shared," says Jared Bernstein of EPI, co-author of the report. "The strong economic growth in the U.S. results from the contributions of people in all walks of life, from laborers to corporate executives. The fact that many families are not sharing in the resulting prosperity stands as our nation's most serious economic problem." This report can be found at www.cbpp.org/1-18-00sfp.htm.

Michigan lecturers may hold a vote

Full-time lecturers at Eastern Michigan University have the right to bargain collectively, the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC) has ruled, and they may hold a representation election this spring. The Eastern Michigan University Lecturers Organizing Congress (EMULOC), which is affiliated with the MFT and the AFT, filed its petition for the election in April 1998. The university fought the petition, claiming that the lecturers are "casual" and temporary employees and could not maintain a "stable" enough unit to carry out negotiations.

This was the same argument the university successfully used in 1971 and 1993 to block the lecturers from organizing. This time, however, EMULOC did an end run, limiting its petition to full-timers and excluding for now the 300 part-time lecturers on whom the university also heavily relies. In its Dec. 28, 1999, decision, MERC said that the lecturers established a record of lecturers who have taught full time for 10 years and some who have taught full or part time for 20 or more years. The commission went on to define voting eligibility more broadly than even the union had sought. It said that membership in the unit could be based on a lecturer's full-time appointment in one semester and subsequent continued employment--whether full or part time.

"Frankly, the administration's arguments were insulting," says Matt Johnson, a lecturer in English and a member of the EMULOC. "They basically described us as disposable labor without any connection to the university."

Chuck Bonnie is a lecturer in sociology who has been teaching at EMU for 26 years and was part of both the 1993 and the current organizing campaigns. After the election, which should take place this month, a top priority at the bargaining table will be "expanding the unit as quickly as possible to include part-timers," he says. Other issues are pay (the lecturers make on average $22,000 annually), year-round medical coverage and seniority rights for teaching appointments.

"We're ecstatic," says Julie Frentrup, a lecturer in chemistry who has taught at EMU for 15 years and who testified before MERC.