Last year, a 22 year-old college graduate was notified that she would be charged $5 a month for using her own debit card. She thought it was absurd.
She wasn’t the only one.
Molly Katchpole went online to change.org and created a petition against the fee brought on by the billion-dollar multinational banking corporation.
“The American people bailed out Bank of America during a financial crisis the banks helped create … How can you justify squeezing another $60 a year from your debit card customers?” the petition read.
Three hundred thousand signatures and a less than a month of social and media pressure later, Bank of America ate their words. The fee was killed.
In May 2011, Manal al-Sherif took video of herself driving a car on the streets of Saudi Arabia.
In the video, al-Sherif, wearing a headscarf and sunglasses, casually takes a left turn across an intersection.
“We are ignorant and illiterate when it comes to driving. You’ll find a woman with a Ph.D., or a professor at a college, and she doesn’t know how to drive,” she said.
Women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia. While women make up 70 percent of persons in institutions of higher learning, they’re 5 percent of the work force, according to a 2006 Saudi-Economy Ministry document.
Al-Sherif uploaded her video to YouTube in late May, and was jailed and charged for inciting women to drive and rallying public opinion. Within days, roughly 600,000 people had viewed the video, and over 70 cases of women finding a seat behind the wheel were documented.
Social media doesn’t anchor movements to existing only online. Slacktivists may lazily click their support, but a study conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication suggests it doesn’t stop there.
“Contrary to the portrayal of a slacktivist as one who passively “likes” things on Facebook but is not truly engaged, survey results show that Americans who get involved with causes through promotional social media activities also continue to participate in cause-related activities outside of the social media space,” the study reads.
It found that social media cause promoters are twice as likely to donate their time than non-social media cause promoters. The study also found that those using social media are four times as likely to recruit others to sign petitions for a cause.
However, 74 percent of those in the survey said emails about supporting causes “sometimes feels like spam.”
Last week, hours were extended at the university’s dining hall, allowing students to eat later at night. Dwayne Isaacs, the assistant director of the University Student Center, said comments from students on Facebook and Twitter initiated the change.
Students are paying customers, and directors and coordinators and chancellors are willing and wanting to listen to students. Complaining on Facebook may help relieve immediate frustration, but it has to go beyond the Internet world. Social media has proven its worth in seriousness in mobilizing movements, garnering petition signatures or bringing on social pressure on higher-ups. Issues need to be rallied and discussed IRL.
Don’t be the slacktivist the virtual skeptics and Twitter-haters roll their eyes at. Go beyond the click.
“When I first started the petition, and even now, people were saying, ‘Just close your bank account and go to another bank.’ I think people are forgetting that not everybody can easily close their bank and join a credit union. There are some neighborhoods in this country where there’s only one bank,” said Katchpole, the woman who created the petition against Bank of America’s fee.
Current students may feel resigned to the way things are because of their short time at the university, but there’s always an incoming freshman class that walks into the issues we leave.
It’s best to voice your concerns or frustrations before the cement dries, and trials become policy.
