The Pacifist Northwest: We're the nation's volunteer factory
Washington and Oregon colleges and universities lead the nation in supplying Peace Corps volunteers, with the University of Washington No. 1. With that and other factors in mind, it's time for the congressional delegations to work to get the planned U.S. Public Service Academy sited here.
In April, Ronald Tschetter swept into Seattle to trumpet the No. 1 ranked Huskies. At the University of Washington's Kane Hall, undergrads and college pashas cheered as Tschetter presented a plaque to Provost Phyllis Wise.
Tschetter is no health-care czar or NCAA exec. He's the director of the Peace Corps.
This year, the UW unseated the University of Wisconsin as the top generator of Peace Corps volunteers [108K PDF]. The University of Oregon in Eugene placed sixth. Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., landed at No. 4 for medium-sized schools.
In the small-college category, the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma was first, with five more Northwest schools scoring in the top 20: Gonzaga University of Spokane, Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Willamette University in Salem, Ore., Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and the The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.
The UW's distinction should hold indefinitely, boosted by powerhouse departments of forestry, engineering, and international studies, as well as an enterprising Peace Corps Master's International program.
Moreover, Washington state contributes the highest number of volunteers per capita to AmeriCorps, the domestic counterpart of the Peace Corps. Mix in international philanthropies, including the world's largest foundation, and the pattern falls together like a pointillist drawing: The Northwest is a global heavyweight in public service.
Fast-forward three years, when Congress announces the location of the new U.S. Public Service Academy, an Annapolis for national service, somewhere in Massachusetts or New York. We'll shuffle around like self-flagellating pilgrims and mutter passive-aggressively that if life were fair, by God, the Northwest would have nabbed that sucker.
Life isn't fair, as all Nordic depressives know, especially in the Hobbesian world of American politics. That's why lawmakers need to unite and exhibit some un-Lutheran hubris. If the U.S. Public Service Academy Act has legs, then the Northwest delegation needs to lock arms and bring home the academy bacon.
We've got some work to do: S. 960, the U.S. Public Service Academy Act, has a dozen Senate co-sponsors, including Hillary Clinton of New York and Republicans Arlen Specter of Pennsylvannia and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. As of July 26, there were exactly zero Northwest co-sponsors.
The House version of the bill, H.R. 1671, has sixty co-sponsors including Oregon's Pete DeFazio and Washington's Jim McDermott.
Only lion-lamb canoodling, including a kumbaya alliance between Eastern Washington's conservative Rep. Doc Hastings and Seattle's McDermott, can make this happen. But why not? Scoring a service academy will be worth the wince-inducing alliances – not to mention that service is inherently nonpartisan.
Academy creators want it in Washington, D.C., where students can grow fluent in bureaucratese and experience K Street Machiavellianism up close. A very bad idea.
Meanwhile, maybe at last the Northwest's service ethic is getting its due. There's an effort under way called the Global State of Washington that aims to promote regional NGOs doing good works internationally. This group has generated some eye-watering stats, identifying more than 350 Washington nonprofits working overseas, almost 300 businesses advancing 400-plus initiatives, and 124 university centers with an international bent.
Academics can debate whether the Northwest's do-gooder-ism is a middle-aged expression of Baby Boom idealism or a mix of fine universities, or the legacy of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and the WPA, or hell-fearing Scandinavians, or the natural extension of Mother Joseph and the Sisters of Providence.
It probably doesn't matter. What matters is that the global citizen/volunteer culture is part of our social fabric. It should become part of the Northwest narrative as well.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 11:49 a.m. inappropriate
Bureaucrat University: The United States Public Service Academy or, as it surely will be called, "Bureaucrat U", is supposed to remedy all the inadequacies of public schooling and create a class of government creatures who will transform the monster bureaucracy into something efficient. Some of them, for example, might be able to speak (gasp) German or, possibly, even English!
If you think that government bureaucrats are arrogant, condescending, un-caring, self-serving little despots now, just wait until they get college degrees in bureaucratic incompetence. I leave it up to you to imagine the curriculum (Back-stabbing 101, Cover Your Ass 200, etc.)
But the question of utmost importance to all Americans is certain to be: will they have a football team?
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 12:56 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Bureaucrat University: Troll.
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 1:38 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Bureaucrat University: A clever and confounding retort. Utterly devastating. When you can't comment on the content, always make an ad hominem attack. SOP for the intellectually challenged.
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 2:55 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Bureaucrat University: I fail to see what content you provided in your "response".
In a time when hundreds of thousands of military families are sacrificing for a "nation" at war, I don't think that creating an academy that promotes public service is such a bad idea.
As for your imagined curriculum, that sounds more like a grad from Regent University. Political appointees are the hacks/despots/Mayberry Machiavellis that have caused so many problems in government.
Unless you think that Michael Brown, former FEMA director Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, couldn't have benefited from some higher level courses on crisis management.
I called you a troll because your comment is so wildly absurd that to respond to it on its "merits" strikes me as an exercise in futility.
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 3:57 p.m. inappropriate
Peace Corps demographics: Peter: Very interesting story. I'd be interested in knowing about the demographics of the Peace Corps and other volunteer agencies and how they compare with our region's.
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 4:34 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Bureaucrat University: Please knock it off, guys, so I don't have to start deleting posts.
Posted Mon, Jul 30, 7:53 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Peace Corps demographics: Thanks, Skip. I may scribble a meatier part II that focuses on the demographics (In my original run, I arrogantly claimed the NW was a "kibbutz with conifers.") In fact, Minneapolis outranks Seattle on the civic-participation index, but I'm unscientific and aggregating the whole Northwest. (Per Robert Putnam, we may be "bowling alone," but not as alone as in, say, California).
Posted Tue, Jul 31, 10:39 p.m. inappropriate
Common Book for a Common Cause in a Common World: Just maybe the UW's high Peace Corps volunteer rate is due to the UW's Common Book program. The UW's first common book was Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World". But then again, author Kidder points out in this Seattle Times article that the UW was one of 40 or so colleges that declared it "their" common book, so maybe UW students are just innately more inclined to volunteer than students from other schools.
Posted Wed, Aug 22, 2:50 p.m. inappropriate
THE MORNING WILL COME WHEN THE WORLD IS MINE: Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what can you do for Hillary Clinton. I was a guinea pig at Hillary's "think tank." Somewhere, between Purgatory and the Soviet Gulag system, Hillary spawned the US Public Service Academy. The Duke lacrosse team fiasco shows that liberal educators have created a phony cultural paradigm that distorts reality. And, nobody exploits phony paradigms, obfuscates the truth, or games the system like the Clintons.
TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME
Set the Wayback Machine for 23 August 1995: a hot day in the nation's capitol. But 3000 miles due west on the California Coast, a constellation of events was unfolding that would have a cataclysmic effect. Bill Clinton picked up the telephone. It was his Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, calling from a payphone in Monterey. Bill held the receiver at arms length and gazed at the tasteful floral arrangement that adorned the Oval Office. Leon's disembodied voice filled the room. What now, asked Hillary. It's that damn college, mouthed Bill. Hillary nodded; just tell Leon he'll get whatever he needs. There was, no getting out: http://theseedsof9-11.com