Surfrider club is a national organization at the University of Miami that seeks to spread awareness about different environmental issues that are affecting the earth. This club, through surfing, speaks about the different things that could be done in order to improve ocean conservation. Surfrider UM’s main objective is to promote social awareness amongst the student body about certain practices that help protect the ocean. This group hosts many projects like beach clean ups, and through these projects they express their views about ocean preservation. Through the students at the University of Miami, the Surfrider organization is able to influence and share their ideologies concerning climate change. This organization at the University of Miami is merely just a subdivision of the actual Surfrider Foundation. This foundation’s main goal is to advocate the climate change crisis as well as demanding certain policies that would help this cause. One of the several ways this group supports their goals is by hosting what they call a virtual march on Washington D.C. where they ask members to send messages to their representatives. By doing so, this group expresses their civic voice towards what they believe is an important issue that is affecting the world. Furthermore, by calling for their representatives in congress to take action this group takes a bigger role in advocacy for climate change. In addition to calling for change upon their representatives this foundation also believes in gathering their members so that they can clean certain areas they know might be heavily polluted. For example, beach clean ups are one of the main ways this organization express their civic voice. The reason behind the Surfrider members cleaning the beach is also due to the fact that they want to be able to surf in a clean environment. They claim that if no action is taken towards environmental protection then soon it will be impossible for others to enjoy the ocean because of this pollution. This is an important group to study because they show many ways that they try to express their preferences on certain issues the strongly believe in. Another important aspect of this Surfrider club is the fact that they express their civic voice through many methods. It has been seen that they participate in attempting to influence legislation in congress, the community, and legislation opposition through the courts. The Surfriders foundation in Maui has been challenging the courts to implement clean water acts so that polluters can be held responsible for their actions. If the court agrees with this coalition, they will agree to sanction Maui country for the discharging of treated sewage water into groundwater. This is important to this group because it expresses their preferences as well as how successful they have been to achieve what they want. In order to conduct my research on this group I plan on conducting survey questions concerning current climate change issues. These questions will be related to how impactful they believe their club has been. In addition, this research will also pertain to how cooperative they believe society has been towards climate change issues. Furthermore, the surveys given will be descriptive so that one could investigate the information of what the participants do and think. This is important to the investigation because it could show their preferences being expressed when they participate politically. The survey will also have questions that pertain to how their preferences could be affected by how the way representatives or candidates act. It is necessary to add questions that investigate if participants are influenced by the way their representatives take action in legislation. This will be crucial to the research because it shows how preferences can affect political activity. In addition, this will explain if the Surfrider club has been able to obtain what they want. The survey questionnaire will contain a variety of questions that will seek to learn the different preferences this group has and if these preferences influence the way they participate politically. This study will attempt to discern why this group strongly supports their ideologies as well as why they represent these ideas in a political standpoint.
