The following is a community editorial expressing the opinions of community members. The views do not reflect Excalibur, its publishers or masthead.
Kanchi Uttamchandani
As any York student would know, over the past few weeks we have been witness to intense campaigning for the YFS elections. In fact, I myself was volunteering for the Student Action team, during which my main task was to reach out to as many people as possible in order to make students aware of our campaign and convince them to vote.
I experienced a mix of responses from the York community. While some were enthusiastic, most students mirrored an attitude of political apathy which is disturbingly common among our generation of millennials. Let’s not confuse this with laziness, as our generation is driven, ambitious, hardworking and has shown record-high participation in volunteer work for social and environmental causes.
There are other reasons to account for this peculiar phenomenon of political apathy. One potential reason is the politicization of an issue which is generally met with indifferent and cynical responses, insinuating that politics is usually perceived as being overly complicated and incomprehensible to the average person. Desensitization is another reason attributable to systemic corruption and disproportionate power influences, which practically renders the political participation useless for an average person.
Justifiably, political apathy makes for a good defence mechanism. Yet, I want to remind my fellow peers that politics is not a bad word and need not always be laden with negative connotations. It can also be used as a positive force to effect a substantial change in the community and our world because advocacy and politics are the best ways to challenge society’s conventions and establishments.
What needs to be changed then is not only the public’s attitude towards politics, but a creation of a new kind of politics focused on problem solving and producing tangible and concrete results. Let’s face it, one does not live in a vacuum. Life circumstances are more or less dictated by structural and institutional factors which are inherently politicized. In fact, political influence is so widespread and ingrained that it even forms part of our complex identities and no one is immune to such experiences. It is possible to construct workable and creative solutions to pressing social problems by using politics as a medium, and campus politics is the first way to get started. It provokes critical thinking and invites open dialogue and discussions about issues that we, as one of the largest student communities in Canada, face. It doesn’t stop with just voting. It requires making a conscious effort to be out there in the field and question old paradigms and systems. If nothing looks suitable, forge your own unique path and be the change that you want to see.
I strongly believe that political impotence is just a disguised process of supporting oppression and injustice. If you don’t speak up and politically engage, then by default, you are a part of the problem and are breeding more ignorance. Let’s break this barrier and make a difference by re-evaluating our perceptions of politics and democracy. After all, we are the future and represent a higher stake than anyone else, so let’s invest in ourselves and harness the power of social media to research and make informed decisions.
