Students dislike politics
“Rebel, rebel, rebel, because our people are still in hell.”
Thus go the lyrics to “Township Rebellion,” a popular song by a hard-line East Coast band with an aggressive moniker.
Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zach De La Rocha sounds dead serious. The country is going to pot. Why?
The answer is simple: politics.
Corrosion of Conformity, another all-the-rage group famed in both the United States and Europe belts out a similar diatribe in a song with a title that could well be an option on a science test. “Condition A/Condition B” poses a rather dichotomous question:
“Politics is the control of wealth and power. We are in condition to condemn politics. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Which side are you on?”
Utah State University students are on the side of the angels.
Many of them have shunned the wretched business altogether.
Take sophomore Erik Levanger.
“I purposely stay away from it. I do not like politics,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t trust politics.”
Sophomore Adam Hernandez takes dislike a step further. He’s ignorant and indifferent. Don’t ask him if he cares about the goings on at the general session of the Utah Legislature.
“I don’t really know what the Legislature is,” he said. “I don’t know anything about politics. My roommate is into it. I know nothing.”
Levanger and Hernandez are likely representative of a majority of college students across the country. Like them, many of their peers seem less interested in political matters than their counterparts of the 1960s and 1970s.
According to a Ball State University study conducted a few years ago by political science professor Mike Corbett, students today are “not as interested in politics as they are in other matters, such as starting careers or developing romantic relationships.
“The term is privatism, because they are interested in their private lives now,” Corbett told BSU’s News Center. “They’ll wait a few years until they are older and settled in their lives before taking an interest in public matters.”
However, not all students are turning their back on the disreputable subject. Some, like USU freshman Nathan Taylor, care but have no time to stay in touch.
“I haven’t listened to the news for weeks,” he said.
Taylor is too tied up working the grind at Convergys Corporation in Logan to pay an ever-increasing tuition bill.
And that, sophomore Jared Witte will tell you, is the problem.
“The kids actually affected by the legislative session are too busy working. They cannot be expected to check up on the Legislature,” he said.
For that matter, why should they be expected to care? If the recent tuition hike is anything to go by, college students aren’t represented in the political process, Witte pointed out.
But then, what about the Associated Students of USU and other student-government bodies?
“ASUSU is completely out of touch with what the real student body feels,” he said, gesturing dismissively with his hands. “They say they question where the money is going, but who cares where the money is going? It’s coming out of my pocket.”
Sophomore Rod Brown added, “Kids aren’t going to go to school.”
Brown blames the Olympics for the sordid state of affairs.
“The state went so far in debt to pay for all those new roads and stadiums. One way for them to get out of debt was to raise out-of-state tuition,” he said.
That move will now drive out-of-state students away.
“Who would want to go to USU from out of state?” asked freshman Jill Gurney.
Hernandez added, “People come here because they want to go to a Mormon school. They might just go to Brigham Young University or BYU-Idaho.”
Instinctive dislike and distrust aside, several USU students have opinions about the issues being discussed at the Capitol. Still others, like Levanger, couldn’t be bothered, though all will admit that political talk doesn’t take up too much of their day. It can’t. There just isn’t enough time for that.
Taylor sums it up.
“Right now, dude, the financial side is a real kick in the pants. It kicks me in the A.”
–leon@cc.usu.edu