Story by Kristin Chang and Maya Murthy
A presidential election and a graduating senior class: one happens every four years, and the other happens annually. When these pivotal events coincide, seniors are often launched into conversations about who they’ll vote for, what they’ll do and how much they care. For the class of 2016, and for many other election-year alumni, graduating amidst a presidential campaign influences not only their interest in politics, but how and why they participate.
It’s a circus out there
Senior Allegra Ziegler-Hunts will be voting for the first time this June, and if her parents have anything to say about it, she’ll be doing it the proper way.
“I think most of my family mails in,” Ziegler-Hunts said, “but my parents said for my first one I should probably show up to the polling place.”
This election is the first she, along with the rest of the class of 2016, is eligible to vote in, and they couldn’t have asked for one that is more interesting. The unprecedented rise of Donald Trump on the Republican side has brought the campaign cycle into the realm of American entertainment. Despite the flurry of social media posts by her classmates regarding the election, Ziegler-Hunts doesn’t know if more young people will cast their ballots.
“I think, at the time, every election feels kind of like a circus but this one pushes it to an extreme,” she said. “Typically, you’ve got young voters [that] don’t actually turn out to vote, [while] this year they’re making a lot of noise online. Whether they actually turn out to vote at the polls, who knows.”
While Ziegler-Hunts isn’t sure if her classmates will actually vote, she does feels that there is a heightened sense of interest in the election and in the voting process this time around that is beyond the norm.
“I think that having the election plus this being senior year and us having Government, there’s just a lot more active discussion about things,” she said. “Although, for the most part I think the people who are actually interested have been active all along. It’s just, more people are being more vocal, because everyone’s kind of at that point.”
Despite the entertainment it’s provided and the interest in electoral politics that this race has created, for Ziegler-Hunts, as well as many others, the process has resulted in a dissatisfying final two candidates.
“I think there’s a lot of who I want to vote for, versus who I’m voting against,” she said. “I think the selection is going to have a lot of who I’m voting against….”
Exercising your rights without the excitement
Voting in her first election by mail at the age of 18, class of 2012 alumnus Parul Goyal distinctly remembers being slightly anxious as she filled it out.
“You do feel very official, very grown up being able to do things like that,” she said. “In the moment when you are drawing the little line and connecting the arrow, making sure you’re doing it right and not messing up, making sure you’re not voting for the wrong candidate and not doing things in a hurry.”
In the school year leading up to the 2012 election, Goyal was a largely passive participant in the electoral process. She didn’t actively seek out information, but absorbed whatever she heard through the televised news or discussions in her A.P. Government class. She, like many Californians, already knew she was going to vote for Obama, and so much of the excitement leading up to the race was lost. Indeed, Goyal sees a difference between student involvement in her year and 2016, and attributes it largely to the uncertainty inherent in an election without an incumbent.
“Obama had already been in office and so people kind of knew what we were going to expect from him going forward, versus now where obviously someone new has to be elected,” Goyal said. “People weren’t as excited about the nominees themselves as they were about actually being able to go out and vote.”
While the 2012 election failed to capture the attention of the year’s senior class, Goyal believes that most of her classmates were eager to simply exercise their right to vote.
“I think it’s more exciting when the moment you turn 18 there’s a presidential election you can vote in, versus all these older people who had turned 21, for whom it was still their first presidential election,” she said. “There was just that kind of a vibe, ‘Oh yeah, we just turned 18 and have the right to vote and will actually be able to practice that right to vote.’”
Star-struck
“Wait right there,” the doorman told her. “Just wait right there.”
Alumni Trudie Wellick, then in fifth grade, did exactly that. Even then, she knew to always listen to doormen: they had the best information. They were the ones who kept all the secrets. As she waited in a corner of the Mayflower Hotel — its simple brick facade and once-elegant interior has long been sold and refurbished into glass modernity — she waited right where the doorman had pointed, in a carpeted corner of the lobby. And through an arched doorway emerged former governor and actor Ronald Reagan.
There were only three things in her mother’s purse that day: a small square of paper, a stub of a pencil and a small cosmetic mirror. But two of those things were enough.
“I remember that he kneeled down to my level,” Wellick said.
Reagan signed her paper with the pencil stub, and she couldn’t even be embarrassed about it. The rest of her memories — bragging to her friends later, what they talked about — faded later, but she could never forget the way he’d approached her by crouching down to her level. Wellick doesn’t remember being nervous, but she remembers a movie he’d starred in, one about malaria, that had touched her. To her, Reagan was a movie star, all glamour and slick-backed hair. This is the memory that replayed in her consciousness years later, just as his movies always had. This is the memory she clung to as she voted for the first time as an MVHS senior in 1980.
“I voted right next to Lincoln Elementary,” Wellick said. “I was really excited, I couldn’t wait to get my ‘I Voted!’ sticker.” Wellick remembers that she never removed the sticker: it clung to the shoulder of her shirt until it became battered into a sticky lump.
In history classes, her teachers had discussed candidates, emphasizing that as seniors who could vote, research was important. But Wellick didn’t need to be reminded: some of her earliest memories were accompanying her mother at the phone bank for Republican candidates, of her father telling her that voting mattered.
So she wrote to all three of the candidates: Republican Ronald Reagan, Democrat Jimmy Carter and Independent John B. Anderson. And only one wrote back.
“I was surprised it was Anderson,” Wellick said. “But that definitely influenced how I voted.” In the fall, that’s exactly who she voted for. She had already liked his views, but receiving his letter — even though it was a form letter — was enough to make her feel like she counted.
“It makes a difference. One vote makes a difference,” Wellick said. “When I raised my children, I taught them the same thing.”
Even now, her memories of meeting Reagan and her parents’ encouragement keep her active. When an MVHS student knocked on her door and told her that Ro Khanna could speak to her, Wellick just shook her head. She didn’t believe it. “Yeah, right,” she replied. Then, that night, after setting up an appointment, still disbelieving, Ro Khanna called her. She picked up the phone, and it felt like receiving that letter all those years ago: her vote still mattered. Though she’s often overwhelmed by heated political debates on social media, some things haven’t changed.
“A vote still mattered then, and it still does now,” Wellick said.
From indifference to action
Jason Jabson was sprawled on his couch. Surfing MTV, maybe — it was the nineties, after all. He wanted to be as sedentary as possible. If he switched the channel, he’d be overwhelmed with flashing images and statistics and close-ups of bland and important men in suits.
“I was never interested in politics or voting,” Jabson said. “It didn’t seem to be worth my time, and I thought only about [graduating].”
Voting wasn’t a graduation requirement, and if he was being honest, he didn’t care for any of the 1996 candidates: Bill Clinton seemed insincere, Bob Dole seemed like a sleaze, and who in the world was Ross Perot, anyway?
While a few of his classmates seemed in a frenzy — it was as if participating that year was an extracurricular activity, just another resume-building club to belong to — he remained indifferent. From the sidelines, lying on his couch, Jabson ignored the streams of phone calls and pamphlets and cries of “Did you hear?” as mundane gossip about candidates circled endlessly.
Now, years later, Jabson feels he’s both missed and gained something from his practiced indifference.
“I see seniors now caring a lot,” Jabson said. “Getting into arguments. And I see how they can joke about it easily, and want to change the system.”
It’s this desire to change the system, he believes, that’s key to participation. It’s what he was missing his senior year.
“I didn’t trust the system, but I didn’t do anything about it,” Jabson said.
What he observes now about high schoolers is that they want to build something new, which also means they want to tear things down. Enraged Facebook posts and sarcastic comments amuse him, but they also inspire him.
“I think to myself, ‘Wow, this is a culture of being active,’” Jabson said. “Because with social media, everyone wants to be connected, and I see that there’s so much possible.”
A sense of possibility: that’s what he was missing. It’s also what he’s found on social media. He believes that voices aren’t just becoming louder, they’re becoming younger.
“It’s good, then,” Jabson said. “We’re grown up, but somehow we’re still learning.”
