Student Union
Political Rancor Feels Old to America's Youth
Young people watching the rancor between political parties and among average Americans say they do not expect it to get better anytime soon.
“No one seems to want to listen to the other side, and it’s halting any possible progress that could be made otherwise in terms of finding out how best to run the country and what would make the most people happy,” said Christopher Charles Laverde, 22, who writes for the popular anime YouTube channel We the Celestials.
Among Gen Zers (18 to 24 years old), three-quarters said they felt the United States is more divided than before, according to More in Common, an organization that focuses on building “more united, inclusive and resilient societies in which people believe that what they have in common is stronger than what divides them,” according to their website.
In More in Common’s poll, nearly half said they believe the U.S. will remain in the same state of division in 2021, while 36% said they believe the United States will be less united. Far fewer — 17% — said they believe the United States will be more united.
“It's important to keep having these conversations,” said Noelle Malvar, a senior researcher at More in Common, in a video interview. “And [Gen Z] likes messages that speak to this idea that democracy and justice are things to keep working on.”
“For example, they know that addressing inequality, or fighting for justice takes time, and that this needs to be thought about,” she said.
More in Common’s research showed that 60% of young people polled said racial equality was the most important issue for them, with health care and the cost of education being subsequent issues.
In June, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found in their research that the environment, racism and affordable health care were the top three issues driving youth in the 2020 elections.
“Getting back to normal after the pandemic and police mistreatment also ranked highly,” CIRCLE reported.
Americans of all ages see more conflict than they did in the past two presidential election cycles, according to a Pew Research poll published in March.
Among young people, 18 to 29 in particular, more than 70% said rifts between Republicans and Democrats are very strong, Pew reported. In the same survey, 23% of young people said rifts between these two groups are strong, while 4% called the rifts not very strong between the parties.
Kahnika Mehra is an English and communications major at the University of Maryland who interns at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C. She said she sees an increase in political polarization on social media.
“I find current conversations [between Republicans and Democrats] so dysfunctional and toxic,” she said in an interview with VOA.
Young people do not feel good about the divide. Less than half — 44% — of students said they feel proud to be an American, Chegg and College Plus reported.
Jacob Ehlers, 27, said his family has been divided by political rifts.
“My distant Republican relatives were already pretty bad when Obama was first elected but they got worse with the Tea Party, and then when [President Donald] Trump came around, it became unbearable. We couldn't have a normal discussion anymore,” Ehlers said.
Days before the election, Reuters news agency reported about families cleaved by political discord. When a mother from Milwaukee told her son she was voting for Trump because she aligned with his views on immigration, he said he was disowning her.
“This divide is affecting people’s mental and physical health because there’s so much fear-mongering going on,” Laverde said. “It feels like there’s going to be another war in America and no matter who wins, we're all going to end up losing in the long run.”
Laverde added, “Not to mention, however the virus situation goes, and any number of things really,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It's not hard to provoke the public.”
According to a study by the Healthy Minds Network, depression in 2019 increased among young people. Between March and May 2020, a higher proportion of students reported that their mental health negatively affected their academic performance, compared with the year before.
Yafei Zhao, a journalism major at the University of Maryland College Park, lived in the Shandong province on the northeast coast of China before moving to the United States in 2013. He said he hopes polarizing partisanship in the United States will go away, but said this is unlikely.
“I feel like we should all unite together as a nation and as a country because our differences are what makes us stronger,” Zhao said.
“I think political disagreement is a natural part of any free society. Yet in recent years, the partisan divide has continued to grow larger,” said Shehryar Haris, a master’s candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington. Haris was born in Karachi and grew up in Dubai.
“Populist tides have largely overtaken the discourse, which is dangerous,” she said. “But the American political and legal systems are designed in such a way to ensure checks and balances that allow government to resist these growing populist waves.”
Justin Young, 25, said he remains optimistic about the future and how conflicts will be resolved.
“I hope that people can look beyond cheap externalities when listening to a message,” Young said. “This, however, will not be a short and simple process. Especially with world issues. ... It’s going to take years and a concerted effort to make Americans un-partisan again.”
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College athletes push for voter turnout while largely avoiding controversy as election nears
Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
