For so long, we’ve been fed inspirational lines about how Gen Z is going to change the world – how youth activism is finally going to turn the tide. We were supposed to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the mess our parents and grandparents’ generations left behind. While that was true at one point, it now seems we’ve veered off course.
When former president Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, many commented on the “voting power” of Gen Z. That election marked the largest youth voter turnout in 40 years, supposedly demonstrating the clear influence we would have in the years to come.
However, when it came to the 2024 presidential election, youth voter turnout declined, a trend partially attributed to the nature of Biden’s presidency. According to Politico in October 2020, Gen Z were primarily driven by “anti-Trump” sentiments but weren’t “fully sold” on Biden in 2020. The faith Gen Z had in the 2024 Democratic candidates declined further when Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee. The bad habits of the Biden administration – poor messaging and communication – axed our generation’s faith in the government. Believing that no strength can be found in their votes or voices, our generation has fled from active engagement in political affairs.
This apathetic attitude towards the state of the world is extremely apparent at DV, where students completely lose themselves in their schoolwork. Looking at our school’s stellar reputation, with some of the highest-performing students in the Bay Area, it’s evident that students at DV are consistently excelling academically. However, while the student body throws itself into AP classes, many students remain ignorant and uncaring about anything besides school and careers.
The honest truth is that in our community, we are privileged enough to be able to ignore the political turmoil that is occurring nationwide. To demonstrate: the median household income in 2023 for San Ramon was $197,358, nearly double the state average. Living in an idealistic snow globe where most news headlines never reach us, we focus only on preserving the little suburban dream that our parents built for us. We believe there’s no real need to worry about anything outside of our bubble.
By contrast, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Fremont on Nov. 8, ICE’s presence in the Sundale community posed a threat to the children living there. Students were afraid to attend school or even seek healthcare. The difference between Sundale and San Ramon is obvious. In our community, parents can send their children to school without fearing they’ll be deported, but San Ramon immigrants are only different from Sundale immigrants due to tech jobs, H1B visas and eventually green cards or citizenship. Their fiscally conservative, “shut the door behind me” attitude to new immigrants is sheer hypocrisy.
And for that matter, some DV students even actively avoid conversations about politics. This in turn creates an echo chamber, where the handful of politically-engaged students only discuss current events with each other: they strengthen their own views this way, but their classmates are left politically ignorant. The only ones happy are the Republican tech billionaires employing most of our parents and funding this luxurious lifestyle.
Though our community enables this sort of ignorance, it does not justify it. While acknowledging our privilege is a good place to start, we must ensure that students do not continue this cycle of apathy in the future, since we’re already seeing the toll it is taking on our generation. To do so, we must address the root of apathy: naivete. A lot of the detachment that students feel towards current affairs is due to a lack of understanding. If we never even hear about what’s happening, how can we bring ourselves to take a stand?
At our school, students take a multitude of classes from freshman to senior year, but discussions of current global affairs are left to the whims of individual teachers. As it stands, to be an educated citizen, one must seek out that information on one’s own. And so, students must be exposed to the relevant events occurring in our community, state and nation from as young as freshman year, so that we can break the cycle of passivity we perpetuate. Some ways to accomplish this would be through school-wide assemblies to give students reliable information about ongoing issues, or also by incorporating current news into each individual subject area throughout various courses.
Regardless of what the solution may look like, we need a way to make sure students stay on top of current affairs. It has never been more crucial for our generation to break free from the notion that ‘nothing matters anymore.’ We must start to care, because one day this little bubble that we have created for ourselves will burst. And when that day comes — unless we’ve learned to rise up while we still can — we’ll be left voiceless and vulnerable.
