In my senior year at CMU, I was the Student Body Vice President for Finance (SBVPF) and a member of the Student Government Executive Committee. In this capacity, I discussed with a Pittsburgh city planner on the potential designation of CMU’s student government as a Registered Community Organization (RSO), which is a way to have official standing with the city government, which requires all construction projects (e.g. a new boba shop) in the neighborhoods to hold a public hearing with the RSO. On the other hand, this status also comes with the responsibility to reach out to local stakeholders, including businesses and non-student residents, on new developments. The effort was ultimately abandoned as it was determined that students would not be able to perform such outreach consistently.

If you frequent student groups on social media, this might come as a slight surprise, since there seems to be no shortage of students speaking their minds, criticizing others, and imploring them to donate to certain causes or pay reparations. Speaking from experience and anecdotal evidence, there is a staggeringly large amount of students who are eager to be right and to tell others they are wrong - I am somewhat guilty of this as well. Nobody likes being wrong or being on the moral low ground. As with most young people around the world, including those in Iran and Hong Kong, the most vocal ones are often eager to accuse those who are taking the other side or a neutral or apathetic stance as being complicit in whichever ideology, policy, or status quo is being opposed by the mainstream youth.

First of all, if your goal is to effect political change, then you need to change those who are in power, which in the case of the U.S. political system are the voters and politicians (there are obviously other interests that hold indirect political influence, but that’s beside the point). Thus, it might not be worthwhile to attempt to convince someone who cannot vote or contribute to election activities, someone who already holds the same opinion as you but might be less vocal, or someone who will not change their position no matter what. Inciting online violence against someone who is suspected of wrongdoing will not turn the victim to support your cause, or change any of the bystanders’ views. It will not “root out racism on the CMU campus,” to quote an unnamed commenter.

In addition, as former U.S. President Barack Obama (his political merits aside) mentioned in his essay How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change, effecting real political change in this country requires both organizing ideological movements (e.g. the American civil rights movement) and participation in traditional electoral politics, especially at the state and local level. There are countless cases of hardworking families being evicted or no longer being able to afford rent increases due to lack of appropriate local rent control; there are also countless cases of colored populations being denied access to proper transportation, a basic human right, because a few members of the privileged class decided that their trees and “neighborhood character” is more important than the ability of poorer families to travel to their workplaces on time and earn a livelihood. The city of Oakland, CA has long been accused of implementing policies that allow pollution to increase in historically minority neighborhoods. This is racism and classism that is happening every day around the country and around the world.

As many may know, local issues like zoning, rent control, and public transit development are under the purview of city/county government and/or regional transit revenue districts (e.g. Bay Area Rapid Transit District). Although these agencies do oftentimes receive state and federal funding, most of their decision-making processes involves the solicitation of stakeholder input and reaching a conclusion that is agreed upon by the elected representatives (e.g. city councilpersons) or board members. In addition, state and federal funding are usually partial and require local revenue matching, which requires ballot measures (referendums) to raise taxes and/or issue bonds (e.g. Measure R in Los Angeles). The aforementioned stakeholders include both local residents and businesses alike, and for residents the solicitation of feedback often takes the form of public meetings. These public meetings are usually held on weeknights and poorly publicized, and thus are primarily attended by middle-aged and senior persons, whose interests and political positions often run contrary to those of younger students and working professionals. This lack of turnout often causes the “general opinion” gauged during the public meetings to be much more conservative than the actual one, if all eligible voters turned out. In many cases, this hinders initiatives and projects that aim to move municipalities toward modern urban planning practices or that propose large capital expenditures for infrastructure (e.g. schools, subways).

One example of this is the Lincoln School Building Project, which one of my acquaintances was involved in as a volunteer. For context, Lincoln is a small but rich town in Massachusetts with a population of 6,362 and a median household income of $134,211 as of 2018. In the decade 2000-2010, the town’s only K-8 school experienced funding shortages that created facilities issues and maintenance backlogs, which required the school and town to create a master plan for a large project which will clear the backlog and bring the facilities to modern standards. The town submitted the plan and funding proposal to the state in 2008-2009. In 2010, the town of Lincoln was selected to receive funding from the state to partially fund repairs to the school. However, after 2 years of the architectural design process, the proposal for the town to provide the remainder of the funding was rejected at a Town Meeting, short of a two-thirds supermajority. Thus, the state funding was forfeited and the town was unable to proceed with the needed repairs. A large reason for this defeat was that most of the voters present were older individuals who did not plan to raise children who would attend the K-8 school, and thus had no personal interest in funding it. Members of younger families who were raising or about to raise K-8-aged children who would attend the school had a small turnout, consistent with their turnout in public meetings across the country. Participation matters.

Students are even more removed from these crucial public meetings, oftentimes allowing their interests to be wholly represented by their universities in their talks with local governments. Thanks to the groups heckling passers-by around campus to ask if they have registered to vote, many American CMU students have voted in national elections, especially the general elections in 2016 (which elected Trump and a Republican Congress) and 2018. Still, many eligible voters probably did not register or did not vote for various reasons. Members of Student Government have attempted to work with the university administration to alleviate it this year, possibly by having no classes for part of Election Day 2020. On the other hand, how many students knew about, not to mention took the time to vote in the local elections in 2017 and 2019? How many have been to a single government public meeting? Granted, as most university students do not have dependents that require public schooling, they might not have much of a stake in the election of school district directors. However, there are questions and issues that are affected by these “off-year” elections which certainly affect students on a personal level. In 2019, the Pennsylvania Marsy’s Law Crime victim Rights Amendment to the Pennsylvania State Constitution, which provided a series of 15 rights to victims of crime (which all students can be), was on the ballot for the 2019 state general election. Mayor and city council elections, which are often also on these off-years, directly affect the allocation of funding to pedestrian infrastructure repairs on city streets, which are clearly critical to the health and safety of all students, especially given recent reports of serious injuries at crosswalks.

In this respect, I would like to note the efforts of the CMU Graduate Student Assembly (GSA), especially its External Affairs committee, in getting CMU graduate students more informed and involved in local politics, as well as advocating for students on issues like the elimination of bus stops. Examples of this includes engaging and endorsing candidates in local elections and bringing in City Councilperson Erika Strassburger for a presentation and Q&A session at a general body meeting.

As listed above, there are many ways in which members of a local community, both citizens and non-citizens alike, can become involved in shaping their community towards positive change, whatever their vision of it may be. Student involvement in these activities are usually low, but it need not be. Instead of accusing fellow students or celebrities/influencers on social media for being complicit or not taking a stand, perhaps we can ask ourselves whether the amount of time, effort, and money that we have spent effectively in the past towards causes we support is commensurate with the amount of passion that some of us are exhibiting at the current moment.