New Approaches for Students in Town-Gown Relations

An innovative approach to community problem-solving has a couple of William and Mary juniors and a new political action committee rising in influence in the Williamsburg area.

William and Mary's Michael Douglass and Josh Karp have done an end-around on the larger and more centralized Student Assembly, creating a new, tighter body called the Students for a Better Williamsburg Political Action Committee. The group works on student issues with the surrounding community by creating relationships.

Douglass and Karp created the PAC following another W&M student's unsuccessful run for a seat on City Council. Possessing multiple contacts and reams of information on the city, neither student wanted to discard this information, yet neither was ready at that time to make a run for office themselves. By setting up a political action committee, Douglass and Karp have created opportunities for others to pitch in. For example, former president of William and Mary, Gene Nichol, donated to the cause:

Karp said that the majority of donations were small-dollar donations from students and recent graduates of the College.

“The majority of our monetary donations come from students at William and Mary, but also students at other colleges we’ve talked to [or] friends of ours,” Karp said.

Some contributions have come from more high-profile donors. One such contributer [sic] was former College President Gene Nichol.

“I spoke with former President Nichol on the phone in June about this idea that I had about SBW and asked him for advice,” Douglass said. “I asked if there were some way that he could show that he was behind it, and he said ‘How about if I sent you a check?’ He sent us $250 and a very nice letter.”

Some criticize the group for its lack of representation of the William and Mary student body, and both Douglass and Karp acknowledge that it is missing. However, both founders believe this group's main purpose is to build strong relationships and be free to examine issues that larger bodies, like William and Mary's Student Assembly, would be too busy or too large to examine.

The Students for a Better Williamsburg PAC is interesting for a couple reasons.

1.) It shows that there are students out there who care about their communities, whether students perceive the communities to be temporarily theirs or not. At this point in time, student assemblies and student governments are so ingrained in the college culture and so large that they lack credibility to students. Is the sloppy drunk student government officer you saw pissing on the drunk bus really invested in solving the community's issues, or is their position merely to pad their resume in order to secure a great position following school? We can't be sure. (There are many participants in student government who have very noble intentions; I'm not setting out to suggest otherwise.) But if there are students who form another group to actually focus on the issues vital to the entire community (in Williamsburg, it's the town's need for water, in addition to a student-driven concern for housing), this initiative says something positive about their intentions.

2.) It points to an interesting future for student government on college campuses. Yes, Millennials are generalized to like institutions and cooperative efforts, but perhaps their need for instant gratification is taking over here. Instead of talking around the problem, which tends to happen at many a student government or senate meeting, a smaller core of students more comfortable with each other sets out to actually do something.