It
seems to me that the only thing that prevents or hinders civic engagement is
indifference or forced. Certainly in some cases, a subject may have absolutely
nothing to do with an individual at all, but I’d be willing to bet there is
some kind of after-effect that could prove relevance. If the butterfly effect
is a notion you accept, then there should be no reason to not become engaged.
It
seems most critical to understand how indifference can be a detriment. For
example, our age group is least likely to vote. In return, our interests are
the least likely to be represented and fought for. Granted, most of us have
only maybe had the opportunity to vote once in local elections, but the general
college-age to mid twenty-something’s hardly vote. So, we see that our public
education and higher education suffer because no one is really expressing their
concerns, or engaging. Sure, we’ll be pissed off when we come to realize that
our tuition is going up, and maybe we should have gone to Pitt because they’re
tuitions is increasing by a smaller percentage per year… But what can we really
do..? Nothing now, at least until the election. Then, we’ll come to realize
that no one in our age group really votes, so yeah, I’ll vote, but what’s it
doing… Oh, there’s a Lord of the Rings marathon on… I guess I’m staying in.
It
seems that it is our lack of a sense of
“voice” in voting scenarios, and for that matter, any other sort of civic
engagement that leads to eventual indifference. How can this be combatted? How
do we suddenly understand that what we do matters, and we have to make out
opinions and preferences heard if we want to ever see an outcome for which
we’ve been hoping.
Maybe
we have to engage in a mild form of delusion, and really become so self
absorbed just so that we feel highly important and that our opinion is the only
one that matters, and the world must know… Just so we get our butts out the
door. But, Lord of the Rings is still on, and someone else is surely going to
the polls today.
I completely agree with this article. A few weeks ago, as you might remember, I was helping out with a voter registration drive. I spent hours in the HUB, East Halls, or just walking around campus asking everyone I saw if they were registered to vote. The responses I got ranged from polite refusals and acceptances to immediate rude dismissals. However, the most common response was "I'm not interested" or "I'm not really political so I don't really know anything". These people refused to register for no other reason than their indifference, which was based on the idea that they weren't really effected by the election. I've become slightly bitter about college students' civic engagement because of this. It is very true that the most destructive thing in a democracy is indifference. I hope that in the fall people do become engaged.
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