Engage: A Call to Promote Political Awareness as Election Unravels

Looking outside the bubble: As the presidential election comes to a conclusion, how can Middlesex students learn to engage with the politics that affect them.

Embarking on the 2024-2025 school year, Middlesex hones in on the new word of the year: Engage. At Middlesex we’ve learned to immerse ourselves into our academics, commit to our sports, and foster relationships with one another. But as the presidential election looms over us, how can we as a community learn to engage not only with events that affect us on campus, but events that affect us as citizens? It is true, of course, that the typical MX day leaves little time to read headlines and catch up on current events. But the Middlesex grind can’t be used to justify the rapid decline in media literacy and political engagement across campuses everywhere. The truth is, the more polarizing politics becomes, the more jaded young adults are.

Extremist ideology has overtaken political discourse to the point where we as a society have lost our understanding of a middle ground. It seems like young adults who identify with far-left and far-right beliefs engage more fervently in political discussion; however, for the demographic of young minds who may not hold strong biases–or haven’t been given a chance to form them–one can often feel unrepresented by politics and therefore become disengaged. Even more so, when the politicians who our generation is expected to look up to as the standard for respectful and proactive discourse behave so abusively towards one another, how can our generation learn to engage in respectful and proactive discourse ourselves? 

In breakout groups following Professor Matthew Dickinson’s lecture on the 2024 election, most students in my class stated that because they aren’t voting in the upcoming election, they feel as though it doesn’t affect them, and they therefore pay little attention to the race. This seems to be a common attitude students share, as other peers I’ve spoken to have related the same answer. But if past elections have taught us anything, it’s that whatever happens over the next few weeks–and the next four years–will have ramifications that will shape this country’s social climate immensely, whether we are able to vote or not. Indeed, the next president, whomever he or she may be, will almost certainly nominate supreme court justices who will rule on issues such as abortion. Although here in Massachusetts abortion rights may be something we take for granted, as we begin to look at colleges across America, we would do well to consider how the landscape of reproductive rights and healthcare might affect our sex lives in college. How many of us will have to live in fear of getting pregnant like our grandmothers once did? Being informed lets us move forward, not back to the 1960’s.

A giant step towards engaging in political discourse is to take a step back and think about where we are getting our information from. Apps like Instagram, Tiktok, and X are riddled with political bias to feed you short, digestible information that may or may not be correct. Because our generation grew up with social media and got comfortable with mistaking entertainment for news, we owe it to ourselves to seek out sources that we can trust. Even more so, young adults need to show that they can be trusted with the nuances and gray areas of political life. Speaking to my peers, some have said that they don’t like to get involved with politics because they see it as “an adult thing.” But our generation must unlearn the stereotype that politics isn’t for us. 

As the 2024 Presidential Election comes to a close, how we’re engaging in politics matters. Whether it's reading The Times or having a conversation with a fellow peer, we must learn to become curious, and tolerate the discomfort of asking questions that may change our views, or even create a new one. Our school needs to look outside the Middlesex Bubble, and realize that this election is not only happening to voters, but it's also happening to us.

Kat Stephens