GARY | A checkup on Indiana's civic health lays out its residents' strengths and makes clear the areas they can improve - especially voting, and working with neighbors on community improvement projects.
Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton and former Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard led a Tuesday discussion at Indiana University Northwest on the recently published 2015 Indiana Civic Health Index, which measures civic engagement in a variety of areas.
"What we want to do is encourage people to get off the sidelines and enter the arena," Hamilton said.
He highlighted voting, volunteering and engagement with other members of the community on projects to improve the community as areas in need of improvement.
"I'm a little uneasy because I think Hoosiers might be a little less engaged than you and I would want them to be," said Hamilton, now director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University.
He noted a volunteering rate of 26.9 percent, slightly above the national rate of 25.4 percent, but, "I actually thought our volunteering would be better than that," Hamilton said.
The state ranks 26th in that category, he said.
A low rate of voter registration — "dead last" in the country, Hamilton noted — and a lower-than-average voting rate had the report's leaders significantly concerned.
"I used to think that Hoosiers did a pretty good job of voting," he said. "But I don't think that's true."
"We put a lot of barriers between the citizen and the voting booth," Hamilton commented before suggesting reforms such as election day registration.
But, "the chief reason people don't vote is they're cynical," he said.
The antidote to cynicism is involvement," Hamilton continued. "If a person is involved in their community, they're not going to be cynical."
Civic engagement, including participation in community improvement projects, contacting public officials and attending meetings, and promoting civic education, can also lead to economic benefits, Hamilton said.
Shepard noted Indiana residents have above-average trust in schools, corporations and the media. "I take all three of these to be relatively good news."
He also noted a "very high level of association between people with a higher level of education and proclivity to be civically engaged with fellow citizens."
The Rev. Dwight Gardner, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Gary, was among the attendees. He drew attention to the plight of the city's schools.
"I got to feeling that I was reading 'A Tale of Two Cities,'" he said of the Civic Health Index. There's 84 percent confidence in public schools, he noted, "yet I live in a city that has more charter schools than any other city of its size in the nation. And they're all failing."
Shepard said school trust was an area that saw significant differences among urban, suburban and rural residents. The charter school issue isn't the same in rural areas, where they're not economically viable.
"That suggests a need for stronger conversation," he said.
Gardner also commented on the voting issue, in the context of high unemployment and child poverty: "People who have hope are people who vote."
Charles Dunlap, executive director of the Indiana Bar Foundation, one of the report's sponsors, agreed people can come to feel disenfranchised.
Low voting can be "a reflection about how people feel about their communities," he said.
Dunlap said a push to raise registration and voting should be a focus of the civic engagement project as it continues.
This year's index is the second one published. In addition to the challenges it presents, it shows Indiana residents are much more engaged with family and religious institutions than their fellow citizens, and have increased their discussion of political issues with family and friends significantly since the first report in 2011.
"You and I have inherited a marvelous state," Hamilton told Tuesday's gathering. "Our job is to make it better for the next generation."