The setup of typical polls and surveys makes it difficult to determine what exactly is the biggest problem college students face today, School of Communication professor Dotty Lynch said during a panel discussion last night on student activists and their role in the presidential election.
Students have indicated they care most about the economy and the Iraq - just like the rest of America. However, issues like health care and student debt are also important, just not necessarily the first in polls, Lynch said.
Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, said students' biggest problem is determining how to access the political system and engaging in civil society.
Luke Swarthout, a higher education advocate from the Public Interest Research Groups, said a Yale study indicated youth turn out to vote in larger numbers when they are asked.
Gans spent a large portion of the evening discussing the importance of maintaining student activism after graduation. Gans said students who were active before 1972 remained involved in politics. College activists after that year were only influential in their college years. Current student activism relies heavily on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama winning the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
"If he fails, you're going to have a turning away," Gans said.
Lynch said the media encourages Obama voters and has made him into a celebrity.
"Right now, the media is in love with the idea of the youth vote and Obama," she said.
She followed this with a warning on the media's tendency to flip sides, which could lead to more problems for the Obama campaign and society's view of youth voters.
Swarthout said he disagreed with the tendency to group all youth voters as Obama supporters.
The goal should be to increase people's level of involvement by one small step each, which would make an incredible change, said Ian Storrar, director of youth and volunteer programs for Common Cause, a nonprofit devoted to keeping politicians accountable to public interest, according to its website.
D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh, a law professor at George Washington University, said grassroots campaigns are effective for student involvement.
"When I ran for office for the first time, my students were my campaign," Cheh said.
She said her students loved to learn about campaigning on a grassroots level and to have a single person to support.
Krista Jorstad, a freshman in the School of International Service, said she organized the event as an attempt to start a chapter of Student PIRG on campus. Some of its goals are working to bring attention to student issues, encouraging youth voting and finding ways to make college more affordable, according to its Facebook group, which Jorstad created and promotes as a source of the organization's information.
