MontPIRG seeks to embolden future civic leaders

MontPIRG is a nonpartisan, student-led advocacy group aimed at creating civic leadership through hands-on experience with state and local policymaking, according to Carl Anderson, MontPIRG’s Bozeman-Billings regional director.

The organization, which is governed by a board of undergraduate students from MSU and the University of Montana (UM), focuses on issues such as consumer protection, environmental policy and voting rights, Anderson said. 

Although MontPIRG — which stands for Montana Public Interest Research Group — was founded at UM in 1981, it wasn’t until a little over seven years ago that Anderson started the MSU chapter. Coming from a background in clinical psychology and biochemistry, he felt displeased with the lack of scientific understanding in public policy discourse and decided to take action.

After leaving his job at an MSU biochemistry lab, he was hired by MontPIRG as the Bozeman field organizer for the Montanans for the 6-Mill Levy campaign. This campaign advocated for the renewal of the 6-Mill Levy, which helps fund the University and enables in-state tuition, Anderson said. 

“I went from being in a laboratory growing bacteria for eight hours a day, never interacting with a human being whatsoever, to knocking on doors all over the state to talk to people about politics and education. So, it was very much baptism by fire,” he said.

As a result of this experience, Anderson offered to help MontPIRG establish itself in Bozeman. Now, the MSU chapter has dozens of volunteers and around 10 interns each semester, Anderson said. 

According to the MontPIRG website, volunteers and interns engage in a wide range of activities, from knocking on doors and collecting petition signatures to visiting the state capital and lobbying public officials.

In preparation for the upcoming municipal elections, MontPIRG collaborated with the MSU Citizens’ Climate Lobby to host two events on Oct. 15 featuring the three mayoral candidates and the six candidates for City Commission. 

Candidates came to campus to interact with the MSU community and answer student questions, according to a flyer created for the event. Later that evening, candidates gathered at College Street Taproom for a traditional forum.

According to Anderson, while the organization’s focuses remain pretty consistent — voter rights, consumer protection and environmental policy — it also engages with other issues, per the student executive board’s wishes. “They have a vote [telling] us what to do, and again, we do it,” he said. 

According to him, any student can volunteer for as long a period as they would like. However, those seeking more structure can enroll in MontPIRG’s internship program, where they can earn three upper-division credits and a $650 stipend for 10 hours of work per week over a semester, he said.

MontPIRG Board Chair Charlie Strom, a sociology major at MSU, worked as an intern last semester. According to them, while attending a City Commission meeting and inquiring about the upcoming water adequacy for residential development (WARD) ballot initiative, they felt inspired to apply for an executive board position.

“'I’ve never had an experience like that, where I was trying to make sense of a real-world, meaningful issue that affected our lives [and] the lives of people we cared about, in a way where there was no right answer,” Strom said.

“And that's when it clicked for me, ‘Oh, MontPIRG is offering students something that I've never had in my educational experience.’”

According to Strom, civic engagement is special because it requires hope. “It's fundamentally hopeful work, because you're hoping to change a system, an institution — things that feel so inertia-bound and immovable — you're trying to change them for the better,” they said.

To learn more about MontPIRG, visit https://www.mtpirg.org/  or follow its Instagram @montpirg.