By Nick Pantages
@nick_pantages22
The thought of voting can be an overwhelming prospect for many college students. Some believe they are uninformed, their vote doesn’t matter or they are too young to care about politics.
This is the furthest thing from the truth.
During the last presidential election cycle, in 2020, there were around 20 million college students, graduate and undergraduate, with approximately 66% of voting age students taking part in their civil duty.
That totals out to just over 13 million students voting, exhibiting the impact college students can make in the polls.
Despite this sizable number, the 18-24 age range in the United States has usually fluctuated around 30 million people in the last decade, and according to Associate Professor of English Paul Thifault, encouraging even more young voter turnout is something that their peers have to advocate for.
“I think the biggest effect young people can have is in motivating fellow young people to vote,” Thifault said. “Guys my age saying ‘go vote, youth!’ only deepens the impression of this being a prehistoric activity. Young people need to help normalize the act of getting to the polls or getting votes mailed in.”
Voting in these elections also helps eliminate some of the fears of young voters. Continued voting will result in a deeper care and understanding of the political climate of their local, state and federal governments.
With this also being the first presidential election many Springfield College students can vote in, Thifault says it can be a defining moment for students’ identity.
“The first presidential election that one gets to vote in can do alot to shape one’s political identity and civic involvement,” Thifault said. “The election and proceeding administration also becomes a generational point of reference, and a prism through which to understand historical events to come.”
Thifault’s personal experience shows that voting can provide a reference point for students to look back on and give them a benchmark to compare future situations to.
“My parents’ generation, for instance, frequently interprets current events, such as campus protests, through the lens of 1968, just as my own meticulousness in carefully filling out the oval on my ballot can be traced back to my youthful experience of the amazingly close and contested election of 2000,” Thifault said.
During the election season, many students will undoubtedly have passionate views on some of the election’s key talking points – abortion, the economy, immigration and foreign policy – but the number one aspect that has a direct impact on college students is the federal student loan debt relief plans.
The Biden-Harris administration’s bill to help millions of Americans on their student loan payments is currently in a judicial abyss, stuck in the courts with no solution on the horizon. The candidates’ views differ, with Vice President Kamala Harris praising her regime helping cancel 170 billion dollars in student loan debt, while former President Donald Trump agreed with the Supreme Court’s striking down of Biden’s bill, while also providing road blocks during his presidency for student loan forgiveness acts. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic however, Trump did allow a student loan payment pause.
According to Thifault, this is possibly the biggest piece of the election that will specifically impact college students.
“Many college students will feel the impact in terms of student loan debt and loan forgiveness plans. It will be interesting to see whether or to what degree the next administration picks up the thread of President Biden’s various plans to reduce student debt,” Thifault said.
For Springfield College and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in particular, there are other parts of the election that institutions and students will feel a little more directly than who becomes President.
The largest proportion of students at Springfield College are from Massachusetts, where ballot questions like Question 5 – gradually forcing restaurants to pay servers minimum wage and pool tips – do not have a direct impact on colleges explicitly. Still , many college age students work in the restaurant industry either while at school or over the summer, and can have a defining impact on them.
However Question 2, the proposed elimination of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, better known as the MCAS, as a graduation requirement will have a direct impact on students and colleges now and in the future.
“Higher Education will surely be paying attention to the results of a ballot question proposing to eliminate the mandate that high school students pass the MCAS test in order to graduate,” Thifault said.
Thifault expanded on the fact that it could have more of a ripple effect than just in Massachusetts high schools.
“I think this question sits squarely within a larger discussion of the value of standardized testing as a measurement of academic achievement or potential,” Thifault said.
While it is just a small school in Western Massachusetts, Springfield College will feel the effects of this election. The core issues mentioned earlier, along with additional talking points such as academic freedom, Title IX interpretations and transgender rights will prove to have a personal impact. Because of this, Thifault explains that the campus will feel the effects of the election due to the fact that there are so many different opinions floating around.
“Springfield College is made up of people, so we’ll all feel the impact of the next administration’s actions or attitudes towards healthcare, abortion, wars, immigration, and economic policies,” Thifault said.
Photo courtesy of Springfield College.