Less than half of the registered voters actually voted this past Election Day. 600,000 people eligible to vote couldn’t vote because they did’t have a proper I.D. to vote. What’s your excuse?
We’re too young, so what does it matter to us? Well it matters a lot, in fact this past Election Day, five seats on the AISD board of trustees were up for grabs. Which means for four more years, if you’re a freshman, someone you don’t know the name of will have a huge impact on your life.
Many people think their votes won’t make a difference, that elections are rigged, there are just too many people for one vote to count, or that we, the students, can’t vote in the first place and can’t affect the outcome.
That’s where we’re mistaken, because we, the students, are the most influential forces in our parent’s lives, not the advertisements on TV, or the phone calls from politicians, not even lame little bumper stickers. If no one voted because of some lame reason, then what we would have is an extremely tiny minority of the population voicing the opinion of the entire population.
So if those eligible choose not to vote, and we, the students choose not to tell our parents what’s going on in our school lives, what benefits could possibly come? We shouldn’t choose to be ignorant to what’s going on in the world around us; we should know names like Kendall Pace, Robert Schneider, and Yasmin Wagner, Julie Cowan, Edmund Gordon, and Paul Saldana.
Pace, for example, won the election to the District 9 at-large position on the AISD board of trustees. That means for the next four years, she will be the representative for the entire city, which includes us, and we should know her. Schneider won the election for District 7, which includes Bowie in its boundaries. So he one of the people who will be trying to balance the AISD’s budget, and hopefully trying to get more money allocated to Bowie High School, and we don’t even know his name.
So as the money flies in and out every which way, what should we do?
Instead of complaining to your friends about what you don’t like at Bowie, let the people who will be dishing out the cash know what’s up. We can make a difference in not only our own lives, but also the lives of people around us, just by getting involved in the world around us.
Get to know the issues here at home, and then form your own opinions; don’t derive them from a political party, friend, or relative. Then get to know who is running and what they plan to do, so that you or your parent can make an educated selection instead of one based off of party affiliation or what name you like better.
We, the students, should care about what’s going on in the district, the city, the county, the state, the nation, and the world. Know the issues, know the candidates, and know that every person, no matter the age, makes a difference.