Call Your Representatives: Connecting Classroom Learning to Real-world Policy Action

Abstract

This article presents an in-class exercise that teaches students how to call elected officials about a course-related issue of their choice. The goals are to connect classroom learning with real-life action, to show that contacting elected officials need not be difficult or intimidating, and to help students develop a sense of efficacy that can contribute to ongoing engagement. I describe the exercise and present evidence that it led students to call their elected officials, most for the first time ever. I show that students find the exercise interesting and empowering and that it increases their civic comfort and self-reported likelihood of contacting a representative in the future.

Keywords

student engagement active learning classroom-based exercises critical pedagogy sociology curriculum

Social science courses seek to build students’ understanding of important social and political issues. The purpose is not simply knowledge for its own sake but also to help students become informed and active decision makers. Most students can vote; they also have input in shaping their communities and society outside of formal political means. Knowledge of substantive issues and well-developed reasoning abilities can help them make better individual and collective decisions about managing the world they will inherit (Slouka 2009).

But civic knowledge does not automatically yield civic action. Most classes that address social issues focus near exclusively on students’ reading, writing for the instructor, and thinking about issues of concern. Action is often addressed only hypothetically, usually by discussing solutions governments could adopt (Cone, Kiesa, and Longo 2006; Kaye 2004).

Some instructors adopt service-learning appro-aches, often addressing issues where a wide consensus exists in support of the ends pursued. For instance, in a class about social stratification, students might be asked to volunteer at a food bank or homeless shelter. In rarer cases, courses ask students to work with organizations that pursue less universally supported ends, such as labor unions or activist groups (Kaye 2004; Matto et al. 2017). A few political science courses even ask students to volunteer on political campaigns (Molina, Theiss-Smith, and Braunstein 2008). But by and large, perhaps because of concerns about coercion, it is rare that courses ask students to directly engage our political system, even in low-cost and easily accessible ways. This lack of connection to political engagement is surprising, given the implicit and sometimes explicit citizenship goals that underlie much of social science education (Hauhart and Grahe 2015:15–38; Westheimer and Kahne 2004).

This article seeks to bridge that gap: it presents an in-class exercise for teaching students how to call elected officials about a course-related issue of their choice. Students participate in a simple yet important form of civic engagement as they articulate their opinion to an elected decision maker or staff member. The goals are to connect classroom learning with real-life action, to show that contacting elected officials need not be difficult or intimidating, and to help students develop a sense of efficacy that can contribute to ongoing engagement. The exercise takes only one class period. It is adaptable to virtually any course that connects to a social or political issue and may also fit well in capstone courses that seek to help students move into more active adult roles (Hauhart and Grahe 2015).

In the following sections, I first describe the exercise, which draws in significant part on a 2016 series of tweets posted by a former congressional staffer (Ellsworth 2017). I then present evidence that the activity led students to call their elected officials, most for the first time ever. I show that students find the exercise interesting and empowering and that it increases their civic comfort and self-reported likelihood of contacting a representative in the future. I consider ways the exercise can be used in most sociology courses, other arts and sciences courses, and some professional school courses.

The Exercise

Context and Setting

I use this activity in undergraduate sociology classes at Elon University, a midsize, somewhat selective private university in North Carolina that emphasizes both liberal arts and active learning. Most students come from middle-class to upper-class backgrounds and have somewhat stronger-than-average academic preparation. The activity is nonetheless applicable across many different types of universities and classes; I address variation across contexts in the Discussion section. Full materials for the exercise are available on my website or by e-mailing me.

The exercise as I use it is ungraded; how well students do in the instructor’s eyes is fairly unimportant. Rather, most benefits come simply from students doing it. I neither refer to nor use coercive sanctions or grades during the activity, but instead consistently describe the task as an interesting and empowering opportunity. If desired, instructors can add a graded written preparatory or follow-up assignment, or include the exercise as part of class participation. However, students feeling some autonomy and control during the process is more important than “getting it right” at any cost, and any assessment used should not crowd out the assignment’s core goals.

Preparation and Execution

I briefly mention the activity on the first day of a new course, when describing assignments. The exercise takes places several weeks into the course or later, after students have developed mastery of some content. The exact timing and format of several pieces of preparation are flexible. For example, instructors can vary the amount of general preparation time given, how much time is allotted for brainstorming in groups, whether students submit ideas in writing beforehand, whether these write-ups are graded, whether students are assigned to read about calling (e.g., Ellsworth 2017; Schulz 2017; Victor 2016) or seek out sample scripts, and what types of issues and targets are considered appropriate. Depending on timing and university policies, instructors might also give students time to complete their voter registration in connection with the exercise.

Two class periods before the activity, I tell students that we will soon be contacting our elected officials and that I will present techniques in class for helping them do so. I ask students to begin thinking about issues from class that could connect to potential policy changes, and I tell them that the best issues often not only have policy connections but are currently “hot”—that is, related to current or upcoming debates in Congress, state politics, or local or even university affairs. Since students vary widely in how closely they are aware of politics and news, I give several examples of issues that might work. In criminology classes, I have mentioned the death penalty, private prisons, spending on different types of criminal justice approaches, and drug policy as example topics. In classes on race, I have mentioned congressional action on Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, building a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, proposed changes in legal immigration levels, and hate crimes legislation.

The next class period, I mention the upcoming exercise again. I ask students to take 15 minutes to research, think, and write about one or two possible issues to call about as part of homework. Alternatively, instructors might allot in-class time for this task. Either way, instructors can ask for student volunteers willing to explain an issue they are beginning to think about to help give other students more ideas.

The day of the exercise, I have students gather in groups of about four to discuss issues to call about. I tell students their job in the groups is to listen to each person describe one or two ideas for what they might call about and share their reactions: Is the student’s opinion clear? Does the issue connect to a current debate, or is it policy relevant? How could the idea or approach be refined? I tell students they need not stay with whatever topic they expected to use coming in; they can change their topic based on others’ suggestions. I call students back together and again ask for several volunteers to say what they are now considering calling about.

I then give a 10- to 15-minute lecture on calling elected officials. This lecture addresses four topics: why calling may be useful and effective, tips for calling, what happens when one calls, and identifying an appropriate official.

First, I address reasons for calling. I suggest that the costs of calling are lower than writing letters, visiting officials, or attending a protest but that politicians pay more attention to phone calls than e-mails, posts on social media, or online petitions (Ellsworth 2017; Victor 2016). I ask students whether they know any examples where citizen engagement may have affected policy or actions by economic and political elites. Sometimes a student states that citizen action may have prevented repeal of the Affordable Care Act and constrained other Trump administration initiatives in its first year; Chicago Digital (2017) provides a relevant list that can be projected on-screen. Items include reversal of a Veterans Affairs hiring freeze, a partial stay and partial reversal of the “Muslim ban,” restoration of climate change data to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, the lifting of “gag orders” on several government agencies, and more. Additional examples from students or that I have mentioned include 2012’s activism against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Schulz 2017), 2015 policy changes by the Federal Communications Commission around net neutrality, and parts of the U.S. civil rights and #metoo movements. Other examples could include public outcries against Congress’s attempt to raise its members’ salaries in 1989, its 2005 bill to increase sanctions against illegal immigration, and 2017 efforts to restrict the Office of Congressional Ethics and to sell off large quantities of federal land (Schulz 2017). Instructors may find local examples of policy changes at their own universities in response to student actions, or examples of for-profit companies changing policies due to consumer protests, useful as well.

I do not oversell the impacts of phone calls, and I acknowledge reasons to question how much citizen opinion matters on some issues (Achen and Bartels 2017; Domhoff 2013; Schubert, Dye, and Zeigler 2015). However, I point out that politicians’ overwhelming proximate concern in most cases is winning enough votes to be reelected (Mayhew 1974), which ultimately leaves enough power in constituents’ hands that politicians cannot recklessly disregard public opinion. I also suggest that citizen engagement can sometimes move politicians at the margins, such as when constituent opinion is mixed, when the elected official is genuinely undecided, when one side appears more motivated, or when public opinion and party or donor preferences are at odds (Miler 2010; Schulz 2017; Victor 2016). I argue that the “naively cynical” claim that non-elites have no power whatsoever, even in a country with above-average levels of democracy (Economist Intelligence Unit 2017), may be no wiser than the “naively optimistic” claim that our political system automatically represents all views equitably and fairly.

Second, I give pointers on effective calling. I note that several online sites that students can access, such as youlobby.org and 5calls.org, provide many scripts for contacting officials. I also mention that they can find scripts for both sides of most political issues through Google searches. However, I encourage students to use their own words as much as they can, as there will not be scripts that match their ideas perfectly in many cases. I also mention that callers should call their own representative, state that they are a constituent and give their ZIP code if useful, have a clear position, address a single issue per call, call no more than once daily, and balance a clear position with politeness. I tell students it is most effective to call undecided legislators but that there can be value in calling already-decided officials as well, whether to oppose or support their position (Schwarz 2017; Victor 2016). I say that students can decide whether they should call representatives linked to their school or home address but that calling based on one’s voter registration address is usually preferable.

Third, I address what happens when one calls, with special attention to the issue of anxiety. I ask students whether they feel nervous about calling an elected official; many say that they do. I make three points in response. First, I say that there is much less reason to be nervous than they may think, because they are most likely to talk to an office intern or answering machine, and they need not be impressively persuasive for their view to be registered. I project on-screen an explanation of what happens when one calls, adopted from Ellsworth (2017):

I’ve seen and heard from several folks worrying about exactly what to say when they call their elected officials to ask them to vote a certain way. I thought it might be helpful for y’all to know what happens on the back end. The staffer who answers your call will be super polite. They will probably be no more than 23 years old and they will be passionate about government service. At the end of your call, they will put a check mark on a piece of paper they are using to track all the constituent calls on a specific issue. They check will either go in the “vote yes” column or the “vote no” column. When one has way more checks than another—it makes a difference. When one issue has an extraordinary amount of checks—it makes a difference. Your eloquence, persuasiveness, and citations are basically irrelevant. . . . So don’t be nervous about calling your elected officials. As long as you can say, “vote no/yes on issue X,” it won’t matter how nervously inarticulate you are.

Second, I say that the preparation they are doing will reduce their nervousness. Third, I state that I also felt nervous when I first called a representative but that this nervousness declined immediately following my first call and continues to decline over more calls. I suggest that in general, allowing nervousness to stop us from taking action is constricting. By contrast, taking actions we value even while experiencing anxiety is a route to significant growth (Clark and Beck 2011; Seligman 2012). Instructors might find an analogy to other “firsts” in which many students have overcome anxiety, such as the first time they asked someone out on a date, drove a car, flew on an airplane, or spoke to a professor outside of class, useful here.

Last, I focus on identifying appropriate officials to call. I tell students that numerous online sites allow them to enter their location and find their elected officials. As of this writing, the most comprehensive site, which lists city, county, state, and national elected officials and their contact information, is the “My Reps” page at http://myreps.datamade.us/. I make sure to point out the difference between state and federal legislators and remind students that they can target a state, county, or city decision maker if their issue is appropriate to that level. I tell them that once they find legislators’ contact information, they should save relevant contacts in their phones, all beginning with the word Politician for easy future reference (e.g., “Politician Senator Smith—DC Office,” “Politician Senator Smith—Springfield Office,” etc.). This way, I say, they can easily find the numbers next time they are in a long line and looking to do something with that time (Schwarz 2017).

After this, I make a sample call on speakerphone, in front of the class. I then give students up to 10 more minutes to do final research on issues, officials, and scripts, and I walk around the classroom to address individual questions. At this stage, issues related to international students or non-U.S. citizens may arise. Instructors should handle these based on particularities of the situation, being mindful that any noncitizen students should not feel pushed to disclose their status or to make calls. I tell students they will have about 12 minutes to make calls and that they should make one or two, leaving messages if they do not reach a live person. I allow students to fan out across the classroom, into the hall, and outside the building to call, as many students feel awkward on the phone with others able to hear them. Students come back and we spend the final 10 minutes of class debriefing in small groups and as a full class. Topics addressed include what happened, how students felt about the process, and how the experience compared to their expectations. I mention calling as a possible civic activity once more in a future class period, when an appropriate connection arises.

Data Collection

To assess the exercise’s effectiveness, I received institutional review board clearance to collect data from two sections of a regular Criminology course in spring of 2017 and two sections of a half-semester course on race in the modern United States, titled Rethinking Race, the following fall. The two Criminology sections together had 55 students, while the race classes had 11 and 15. About 60 percent of students across the courses were women. In Criminology, about 80 percent of students were white and 20 percent were students of color, while the Rethinking Race sections had about 60 percent white students and 40 percent students of color. Both classes had no required prerequisites. Students came from many majors and class years. In all sections, one to two weeks after the exercise, I administered a follow-up anonymous survey. Students were encouraged to participate but participation was voluntary. Forty of 46 eligible Criminology students completed the survey, as did 21 of 23 eligible students in Rethinking Race, for an overall response rate of 88 percent.

Both semesters’ surveys included 11 core closed-ended and three open-ended questions, while the fall version added several more questions. Questions addressed three broad topics: what happened, students’ emotions around the activity and process of calling, and students’ views of how the exercise would affect their future behavior. Specifically, two binary items asked whether students had ever previously contacted an elected official and whether they actually did so as instructed in the exercise. One question gave students six options to identify what happened when they called, such as whether they spoke to a staffer or reached an answering machine. Most other items were measured on Likert scales (Babbie 2015); these included students’ self-reported success in identifying an appropriate issue and official, their view of how well they did, their level of nervousness, how the information provided had affected that nervousness, how the activity had affected their comfort with calling, whether the exercise had increased the likelihood that they would call again or would do so if repeated several times across classes, and two global measures of the activity’s value. Open-ended questions addressed reasons for not calling (if applicable), suggestions for future versions of the exercise, and other comments. Finally, one question asked students to estimate the percentage change in their own likelihood of calling an elected official again as a result of the exercise.

In the spring, I presented the exercise as described above except without advance notice (I had planned it the night before, in response to then-current events) and without making a model call. I added the advance notice and the model call described above for my fall classes, in response to student comments after the first use. This contrast in design across semesters allows me to analyze the efficacy of these two preparation/modeling components in addition to the survey items.

Results

The exercise was effective both terms. Positive effects were especially strong in the fall, when students were given more advance notice and were presented with a model call. Complete breakdowns of results are posted on my website and available via e-mail.

The first set of questions addressed whether students called and what happened when they called. A few respondents did not answer every question, so sample sizes here range from 59 to 61 students. Across the two terms, 52 of 61 students, or 85 percent, made a call (or two calls) as instructed; this was the first time ever contacting an elected official for 62 percent. This movement into a new form of civic action for nearly two thirds of students is noteworthy. Among callers and abstainers combined, 73 percent felt very or somewhat successful in identifying a good issue to call about, while 10 percent were neutral and 17 percent disagreed. Similarly, 70 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed that they were able to identify an appropriate official, while 18 percent were neutral and 12 percent disagreed. Cross-term differences in success at identifying an issue and an official to call were significant at p < .01 and p < .05, respectively. The mean response on a 1-to-5 agree/disagree prompt asking students whether they felt nervous at first was similar across terms (4.2 in the spring and 4.0 in the fall), but mean agreement that information provided helped reduce their nervousness rose from 3.5 to 4.0 across terms (p < .01), most likely due to the greater preparation and modeling. Unsurprisingly, students who did not call reported somewhat higher levels of nervousness and more difficulty identifying an issue and official, compared to others. Overall, students reported that they spoke to a staff member in 48 percent of their calls and reached an answering machine 41 percent of the time, while 7 percent of calls got no answer and 3 percent reached a state representative directly.

The second set of questions asked students how they believed the exercise had affected them and for overall assessments of the activity. Fifty-nine percent of students reported that the exercise would make them more likely to contact an elected official in the future, while 25 percent were neutral and 15 percent disagreed. When asked whether the exercise would have that effect if done several times across different courses, 68 percent agreed, 24 percent were neutral, and 8 percent disagreed. Additionally, 85 percent agreed or strongly agreed that the exercise helped connect classroom learning to real-world action, while 11 percent were neutral and 3 percent disagreed. Sixty-six percent said the exercise was worthwhile, while 28 percent were neutral and 7 percent disagreed. Means were higher on all items in the fall, though differences were statistically significant only for the item addressing multiple repetitions across classes (p < .05).

A third set of questions, asked only in the fall, assessed students’ satisfaction with the process (n = 20). Students’ mean rating for how well they did expressing their views was just above “I did a satisfactory job,” while their mean rating of how well they did compared with what they had expected beforehand was midway between “I did better than I expected to” and “I did about as well as I expected to.” In both these cases, only two students rated their performance below the middle category. A near-identical pattern appeared for two questions that asked how satisfied students were with how things went and how this compared to their expectations. On a 7-point Likert scale, 16 respondents indicated that the exercise made them more comfortable with calling an elected official, while 3 were neutral and only 1 disagreed.

A final question, again only in the fall, asked students to estimate how much the exercise had changed the odds that they might contact a representative in the future, as a percentage. Students could choose either a negative or a positive change, or no change at all. The mean response was +35 percent. This was not the result of a few extreme responses: five students chose figures of 50 percent or higher, another five ranged from 30 to 45 percent, eight chose figures between 15 percent and 25 percent, two chose 0 percent, and none chose negative numbers. The median response was 27.5 percent.

One last set of information on outcomes comes from two extracurricular events at which I presented the exercise. The first was an evening event about discrimination titled “Against All Hate,” organized by a student mentee who invited me as one of several speakers. Several months after the event, my student mentioned unprompted that she saw a large upsurge of groups using a weekly tabling time to have students call elected officials in the weeks following the event and suggested that the exercise may have led to or assisted diffusion of calling. Second, I led students through the activity at a fall student conference on diversity, leadership, and engagement. Here I collected data on students’ perceptions using a standardized university event feedback form; results (available from the author) were again positive. These experiences provide suggestive evidence that the activity can be effectively applied beyond a traditional classroom context.

Discussion and Conclusion

Teaching students how to call their elected officials is worthwhile. Students reported large gains in their comfort with contacting a representative and their likelihood of doing so in the future. That nearly all students participated suggests that they found the activity valuable. Most felt they successfully identified an issue to call about and an appropriate official to contact. While many reported feeling nervous, most also reported that information provided about the process helped reduce nervousness; students also reported satisfaction with their performance in communicating their ideas.

One limitation in assessing effectiveness is that some of the outcome measures address self-predicted future behavior. Lacking data over time, I do not know whether students actually began calling their representatives at higher rates after the exercise, nor whether any effects would be immediate or delayed, or short term or long-lasting. It is also possible that students’ estimates of effects were inflated by the exercise’s recency or by acquiescence bias (Aamodt and Wang 2009; Watson 1992). But while students’ estimates of how much the exercise affected their future behavior might not be taken literally, their view that it did affect them should be taken seriously, for several reasons. First, in some cases, small stimuli can change behavior (Ghoshal 2009; Slater and Rouner 2002; Stephens-Davidowitz 2017). This is especially likely in cases when a desired behavior was blocked by anxiety and an intervention reduces that anxiety (Clark and Beck 2011). Further, because exposure and repetition can build lasting habits (Duhigg 2012; Slater and Rouner 2002), students’ view that repeating the exercise can help inculcate a habit of engagement is probably correct. Finally, outcomes other than future calling behavior, including the calls having occurred, students’ increased comfort with calling, and their greater sense of connection between classroom learning and real-world action, are not subject to prediction biases.

Instructors should consider several features of context as they develop their own variations on the approach presented here. Contexts may vary on at least four important dimensions: (1) course topic and field, (2) course size, (3) students’ interest in political engagement, and (4) university administrators’ and students’ political views. I consider each in turn.

First, this exercise can be used in most substantive courses in sociology with no significant changes. Application in many other social science courses is similarly straightforward. Use in courses focused on the United States will be easiest, though international ties are possible. For instance, in a course on politics, society, or health in Middle Eastern nations, students could articulate their viewpoints to U.S. elected officials who shape foreign policy toward those nations.

The exercise can also be used further afield. Acting and communications instructors might use the activity to give students experience with a different type of audience and form of expression. The exercise could also fit well in natural science courses that address topics like climate change or technological innovation, health care management classes whose topics include Food and Drug Administration decision-making processes or health care reform, business classes where tax policy is salient, education classes whose students include future civics teachers, and more.

Second, the assignment is simpler to oversee in smaller courses than in larger ones. But issues of scale here are no different than in most assignments. Given challenges in monitoring whether large numbers of students are carrying out the task, instructors of large classes might find assigning a small written component helpful. Even if detailed evaluation is not possible, this written task is easy to check off as done or not, and students who have done preparatory work are more likely to take the final step of calling.

Third, students’ interest in and comfort with political engagement may vary. Regardless of context, students’ near-universal belief that older generations have too much political power may help motivate engagement among those with less initial buy-in; some students respond well to the point that if young people do not engage in political process, their futures will be determined by people “who don’t know how to use a computer.” Instructors whose students hail mainly from working-class backgrounds can suggest that calling elected officials tends to reduce power disparities by class: absent widespread citizen engagement, legislators might choose positions based mainly on campaign contributions. Relatedly, some students might be unwilling or unable to call elected officials if they are undocumented or are international students. Instructors should keep these possibilities in mind and not use coercive pressure.

Finally, students vary in their views on issues, and administrations vary in the attitude they take toward student political engagement. Liberal arts colleges and universities that explicitly seek to build students’ political efficacy and civic skills may be extremely supportive. Elsewhere, most administrators will likely look on the assignment favorably as long as they do not perceive instructors as telling students what position to take. Instructors might find it useful to present examples of how citizen engagement has affected policy from across the political spectrum, to reduce the chance that the assignment will incorrectly be seen as promoting a particular viewpoint.

Meanwhile, some classes may yield direct clashes of viewpoints and advocacy between students, while other contexts will see near consensus. Whatever discussions arise here, instructors should be prepared for both the challenges and rewards that come with teaching on “hot” topics that students care about and respond appropriately (e.g., Gould et al. 2011; Zimmerman and Robertson 2017). Ultimately there are few greater favors we can do our students than to help them develop, articulate, and promote their own reasoned perspectives about the issues and policies that shape their lives. This activity moves toward making that goal a reality.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank Ryan Johnson for contributions to the initial design of the exercise in our carpool on the morning of its first use. Elon University’s Faculty Research and Development and Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning provided support in writing this article. An earlier version was presented at the 2018 Eastern Sociological Society meeting in Baltimore, Maryland; I am grateful to participants and audience members for their ideas. The editor, three reviewers, Daniel Rose, Brandon Sheridan, and Andrew Perrin also provided valuable comments.

Editor’s Note

Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Sarah Becker, Stacye Blount, and Robert Hauhart.

Author Biography

Raj Ghoshal is an assistant professor of sociology at Elon University in North Carolina. He studies race, politics, and culture in the United States. His main strands of research address (1) the use of experimental audit methods to study discrimination, (2) collective memory of past racial violence, and (3) pedagogy. Prior work has appeared in American Sociological Review, Cultural Sociology, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Theory & Society, and elsewhere. Website: .

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