Tufts recently opened a chapter of the Roosevelt Institution, a national organization that calls itself "the nation's first student think tank."
The institution's university chapters research, write about, and promote policy for various levels of the United States government.
The Institution seeks to provide the "organizational infrastructure to get student ideas into the public discourse," according to its Web site. An annual policy "expo" also displays policy drafts from chapter members nationwide.
Led by senior co-founders Selin Kent and Matt Raifman, the Tufts group is still getting started.
But, the Institution comes to a fertile climate, organizers said.
"Roosevelt will give Tufts students the opportunity to gain valuable experience working to create policy while in college so as to be better prepared to create policy in the real world," Raifman said.
With so many studying International Relations and Political Science, Tufts students "already think and write about policy-related issues that are relevant to the Roosevelt Institution," Kent said.
The group will "provide a forum for students to voice their opinions" on policy matters, she said.
The founders have lofty goals for the chapter's future even in its first year.
"It would be great to host an inter-chapter conference to showcase our work, establish connections with the political community and produce policy that can qualify for submissions for the national organization's journal, the Roosevelt Review," Kent said.
"But for the time being, even compiling enough information to fill a campus publication would be a very positive sign of development."
The Tufts chapter has yet to decide on a research focus.
A set of challenges, issued by the national Board of Directors, may serve as guidelines.
The first: reduce America's dependence on "foreign, harmful, and unsustainable energy." The second: "build an America that works for working families," and the third: increase socioeconomic diversity in higher education.
Raifman said the community may be leaning the most toward the first goal. "In the past, the Tufts community has been particularly interested in environmental concerns," he said.
The Tufts chapter only recently had its first meeting and has yet to be recognized by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate or to receive funding from the Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ).
"We have a limited budget comprised of our own finances, so we haven't been able to advertise as much as we'd like to. I am confident that Roosevelt will rapidly gain support from the Tufts community," Raifman said.
According to Middlebury College junior Jessica Singleton, a member of the national Board of Directors of the Institution, the organization has been very successful there and on a national level.
"We are full of smart, bright, articulate young people that really care about effecting a local positive change which then translates to a national level," Singleton said.
Its success, she said, is rooted in a sincere desire to help and pragmatic approach to policy with real-world potential.
"People on an administrative level, professors and especially students take it seriously. They consider it an appropriate venue for their ideas...," Singleton said. "They have been working on a state level in terms of policies that can affect Vermont."
And interest has been running high. "We see this by the amount of new chapters we're getting without an extensive outreach campaign," she said. Over the last two years, she said, the group has produced three policy journals and two conferences in Hyde Park at the Roosevelt estate in New York.
"This speaks to the stability and the longevity of the institution... we've become an institution," she said.
Interested students can attend the group's weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. in Eaton 206.
