Students must keep afloat of politics
I am ashamed to call you people my peers.
This semester I am taking JRN 312: Reporting, and our first assignment was to get student reaction on the governor’s race this November. I was thrilled at the assignment — politics is my passion and what I get geeked about. I figured it would take me ten minutes to finish the assignment and by the time class was finished, I would already be gone and off to a self-congratulatory Starbucks coffee.
Oh how wrong I was.
I polled ten people — admittedly not a complete representation of the entire student body, but I’m offended as a citizen and student of this general university population that not one of these ten people even knew who the candidates were in this election.
The rest of my classmates had similar results.
For the record, Virg Bernero is running for the Democrats and Rick Snyder for the Republicans.
Perhaps my angst toward my peers is unjustified, you may counter that the election isn’t for another two and a half months.
In my humble opinion, now is the time to pay attention. Now is when it’s time to get informed.
Government is something that is consistently altering our lives. My stepfather is seriously affected by the health care reform. As an independent insurance agent, his business is unfortunately crippled by health reform.
When I was in high school, it was considered uncool to be ignorant about politics. We regularly paid attention to the news and discussed the goings-on of the world.
Due to this admittedly unusual adolescence, coming to CMU was a complete culture shock to me. This is an educational institution. People should be curious, parched for knowledge.
Frankly, I blame the lack of knowledge base. There aren’t enough “competency” courses in the practical application of knowledge. In this particular area, politics, if students understand the concepts, then they will show interest.
I encourage the university to make government classes, particularly PSC 105: Introduction to American Government and Politics and PSC 261: State and Local Government compulsory, an additional competency. It may seem boring to some, however it is integral to each and every one of our daily lives to understand this system. Each of us pays taxes, all of us attend a state-funded university.
Each one of us has an opportunity to speak up and voice our opinion — to borrow a phrase from the current president’s 2008 campaign, we have the ability to “vote for change.” Indeed, we also have the ability to vote for the status quo.
However, without that vote, without participation, we are simply bystanders.
For those who have yet to show interest, there’s a fantastic Web site called “The Daily Beast” which publishes each morning a “cheat sheet” of the important news stories. I encourage each of you to get informed.
I beg you to care.
