Expert lauds Montana level of social life

Montana has a high level of "social capital" — the social bonds among people — but most of the rest of the country isn’t doing as well, a Harvard University professor told a gathering at Montana State University-Billings Thursday night.

By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff

Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," spoke at the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Montana Campus Compact.

Campus Compact, a nonprofit program that encourages students and professors on Montana campuses to be active in community service, was praised by Putnam as being part of the solution to reverse the trend of social and community disengagement that "Bowling Alone," published in 2000, describes.

Seventeen out of the 21 post-secondary institutions in Montana are involved in Campus Compact, said University of Montana President George Dennison, who was the driving force behind the organization’s establishment in the state.

Americans have become increasingly alienated from each other in the last three decades, Putnam said.

Putnam studied participation in a variety of activities ranging from membership in volunteer organizations to the number of picnics that Americans go on and found that we are spending less time with others.

Participation in public meetings as well as the percentage of Americans who vote are down, too.

The disconnection extends to informal social relationships.

In 1975 the average American had people over to their homes 14 times a year. By 2000, that had dropped to eight times.

Urban sprawl which lengthens commuting time, two-career families and television all have contributed.

"Most people watch (the television program) ‘Friends’ than have them," Putnam joked.

That alienation is having a major effect on Americans’ health and well being.

"Social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking," he said.

A person’s chances of dying in the next year are cut in half if he or she joins one organization.

The strongest predictor of a low-crime rate in a neighborhood is the number of neighbors who know each other by their first names, Putnam said.

Democracy also doesn’t work as well when people are cut off from civic responsibility.

Although he painted a bleak picture, Putnam is optimistic about Americans’ ability to craft solutions to the social-capital deficit.

Putnam’s newest book, which he co-authored with Lewis Feldstein, "Better Together: Restoring the American Community," describes ways people are connecting with each other again.

They include a conservative Southern Baptist Church in California with 47,000 members, a community group that created strong economic growth in Tupelo, Miss., and an organization in southern Texas that brought running water and good schools to an impoverished community.

Putnam’s talk followed the observance of another anniversary earlier in the evening, the 50th anniversary of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

The group was created to give students in states like Montana without medical, dental and veterinary schools a way to attend such schools in other Western states.

Montana undergraduates and graduate students now attend universities throughout the West.

Gov. Judy Martz addressed the anniversary gathering that included many participants in the Montana Board of Regents meeting.

David Longanecker, WICHE executive director, told the group that Montana higher education faces several challenges, including limited funding and a decline in the number of Montanans heading for college.

Future students also will be harder to serve because a growing number will be from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and minority groups.

Solving higher education problems is important not just to Western states, but the country as well, Longanecker said.

The United States has fallen to sixth place in the percentage of its population who are college graduates. Canada, Finland, Ireland and Japan and Korea all have higher percentages.

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