The Highlander March 2017 Vol VIII Issue V
Carlmont High School — Belmont, California
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The savior of the U.S. doesn’t want the job
Millennials resist running for office
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY AVERY ADAMS
Hanalei Pham The government is dysfunctional, and millennials want no part of it. Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP), which has an ongoing poll of millennials, found that young people from ages 18 to 29 have little faith in Congress and the federal government, preferring to spend their volunteer efforts on non-governmental missions. When political science professors Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox asked more than 4,000 high school and college students if they would be interested in running for political office in America in the future, 89 percent of them said no. Shauna Shames, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden, did a study of more than 700 top graduate students in law and public policy to see if they were interested in becoming political candidates. They were not. Madeleine Li, a junior, said, “I don’t see the point of running for two different reasons. One, quite frankly, I see a lot more opportunities in doing community service; there are a lot of things that the government isn’t responsible for or
at the moment aren’t focussing on. The second is that the bureaucracy has become convoluted to the point that no decisions are being made because everyone is so opposed to everyone else.” This reluctance to run for office reflects millennials disenchantment with politics as a whole. “If I were to run, I feel like I would need to subscribe to a certain way of thinking. It would be easier to not have to go through a party system so that I can express and work toward my ideas even when they don’t fall along party lines,” said Li. Many millennials are concerned with the lack of privacy surrounding public figures. Not only are the elected officials themselves under constant scrutiny, but their families are as well. “The idea that your life is under a microscope and every decision you make will be judged and second-guessed is a real turn-off,” said Zach Wong, a junior. Others see politics as corrupt and are skeptical about their ability to effect change through politics, especially with the time politicians spend fundraising. In an interview with CBS News, David Jolly, a former representative from Florida’s 13th district, explained how
every day, members of Congress spend hours on the phone asking for donations to their campaign and party. According to Jolly, congressmen are told that their first responsibility is to raise money. In fact, Jolly said, the schedule for the House of Representatives is partly arranged around fundraising. “Even if you could raise all of this money, there’s something that feels icky about the macro process of so much money being involved in politics. It has this tinge of corruption that then pervades the work that you would do,” said Shames. In light of the fact that bitter partisanship has made it increasingly difficult for legislation to be passed, many millennials feel that the government is inefficient and incapable of getting anything done. For example, in 2013, the U.S. government was shut down when Congress couldn’t agree on a spending bill to fund the government. In an interview with The Atlantic, Shames said that students told her that running for office was comparable to “selling your soul” or that “you would have to be crazy to run for office” and “I’m a very results-oriented person, and
See MILLENNIALS page 14
INSIDE THIS ISSUE CAMPUS FEATURES LIFESTYLE OFF THE GRID NEWS SPORTS OPINION STRANGERS
2-3 4-5 6-7 8-9 10-11 12-13 15 16
Psychological effects of Snapchat
Disconnecting from media
Social media uses brain chemistry to keep users addicted
Elliminating technology benefits the individual
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Mirroring past tragedies President Trump’s Muslim Ban parallels Holocaust
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