Oberlin Initiative in Electoral Politics: Cole Scholars

Hello Bonner community! My name is Robin and I'm writing to you as an office assistant in the Bonner Center for Service and Learning. Amongst my other activities on campus, I am also a 2010 Cole Scholar as part of the Oberlin Initiative in Electoral Politics. Through this program, I along with 12 other Scholars take a class this spring entitled Studies in Electoral Politics which helps train us for a summer internship of our choosing on the campaign trail. In class, we have discussed campaign ethics, field and polling operations, public speaking, what makes a good candidate, new media, and how citizens vote. Just to name a few topics. After much deliberation, I have finally chosen and luckily been accepted to work on Congressman Mark Schauer's (MI-7) reelection campaign in central Michigan.
As a Michigan native, I am excited to be working in a region in which I understand the concerns of voters well and have a deep understanding of the regional culture. At the same time, it is a fairly rural area two hours away from the suburban Detroit neighborhood I am from, allowing me to test out a new political environment within the same general issue areas I am familiar with. The great thing about this internship is that I come in to work on day one with an enormous amount of background knowledge on campaign strategy and theory thanks to the class, and am able to put this in practice in my daily work. We are promised to work for two months, 24/7 so that we are able to gain the greatest experience possible as well as to prove ourselves as valuable workers. The reward for all this hard work is the experience of organizing events, managing volunteers and (hopefully) helping a candidate that we truly believe in win a tough election. In the fall, we write a research paper about our experience so that we are fully able to digest the lessons learned over the summer.
Regardless of one's political ambitions, the Cole Scholar program is an amazing opportunity to learn about politics and gain experience in community organizing, research and communications. With the financial burden of an unpaid internship lifted by the program's summer stipend and coverage of housing, travel and food expenses, this program allows students without any political connections or other resources to gain access to the political world to break through into an area where they can truly make a difference.
If you couldn't tell, I'm really excited about being a Cole Scholar. I see it as an opportunity to see what I can do, to see what I enjoy working on and to see what I'm good at. I plan to work harder than I ever have in my life so that I can have the greatest work experience of my life and use this experience to guide my future career choices into politics, community organizing or policy research. Who knows; with this internship, the world is my oyster. And that's not even being (too) dramatic.