Students: Score Credit for Re-Electing President Obama!

Suppose you’re a college student who is about to begin searching for a summer job. You’ve spent the past few semesters taking classes in “The Spirituality of Running” and “The Mythic Rhetoric of the American Superhero*,” so you feel adequately prepared to hit the job market. (*Note: both are actual college classes.)

There’s only one problem: nobody is hiring.

Two-plus years of ‘Hope and Change’ (and a $787 billion stimulus package), the country is still living in the backwater of “The Great Recession.” The unemployment rate lingers near ten percent.

But for college kids in their early 20s, things are even worse. The unemployment rate for 20 to 24-year-olds is a staggering 16.3 percent. Those economic “green shoots” of a couple years ago have long since withered and died. Okay, so you can’t get a job. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend your summer moping around your parents’ house! President Obama’s “Organizing for America” is already at work to secure his re-election, and they need your help!

From BarackObama.com:

“This summer, Organizing for America will train a new team of summer organizers. We're looking for a new generation of organizers -- not only to help us win elections but also to help strengthen our democracy in communities across the country.”

Here’s the deal: spend your summer vacation organizing your community for the President’s 2012 re-election bid in return for college credits! Maybe. (Actually, that’s something you’ll have to “organize” with your college advisor -- on your own time, of course.)

Sound too good to be true? There’s more:

“This is an unpaid volunteer position….If accepted, Summer Organizers are required to commit to work either 20 hours a week or 40 hours or more per week from June 4 through August 6….Transportation and or reimbursement for travel will not be provided….While housing is not guaranteed, state staff will do the best they can to provide free housing with a local supporter for the duration of the program.”

Sure, it would have been nice if the president had heeded his own recent advice to the Chamber of Commerce to “get off the sidelines” and to start hiring more workers: