Elm City suffers from Yalies' political apathy

A Yale alum and current alderman calls on students to take part in local politics.

At a time when both major parties have a Yalie on their presidential ticket, a Yalie has announced his intentions to run for the New Haven Mayoralty, and campus activism appears resurgent, the status of electoral participation among Yalies has reached a remarkable low point.

In our lifetime, college-aged Americans have declined to use their power at the polls and in the electoral process in growing numbers. In 1976, 42 percent of the 18-to-25 year-old population voted in the presidential election. According to the Federal Election Commission, only 32 percent of young adults voted in the presidential election in 1996.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

However, it would be inaccurate to chastise young people for lacking civic consciousness and a desire to be part of a community. A recent national survey by the California-based Panetta Institute found that the overwhelming majority of college students found community service a more redeeming form of civic participation than electoral politics. Three- quarters of those surveyed said they had engaged in some sort of community service. And one-quarter had contacted an elected official on an issue of concern to them. The verdict against electoral politics was not built upon feelings of deep-seated cynicism about our democracy—something often associated with adult disconnection from the process. Instead young people felt that "government didn't matter" in their lives or on the issues they cared about.

The notion that electoral participation is somehow irrelevant overlooks the positive contributions that government can make in Connecticut. Worse, electoral apathy exacerbates the same set of problems many Yalies seek to help resolve through their community service in New Haven.

Mirroring trends across the nation, Yale's most recent crop of undergraduates are interested in community service, and even in pursuing social change through grassroots activism, but are indifferent if not outright skeptical of participation in electoral politics. Since 1992, Ward One (which includes eight residential colleges and Old Campus) has lost close to 1,800 voters as incoming Yalies register at lower levels than those graduating. Citywide, we've lost 20,000 voters. Ward One's tally is by far the worst individual ward loss in the city. Even more striking is that all of the wards with the largest drops in voter registration are heavily populated with undergraduate and graduate students, including East Rock, Dwight, parts of Wooster and the Downtown area. Yet the number of service and activism groups in Dwight Hall grows every year, and it seems that more Yalies are engaged in New Haven in more profound ways than ever before.

The decrease in Yale registration has negative repercussions for the entire city and disproportionately impacts the children that so many students mentor and tutor. Yalies' apathy diminishes our city's electoral clout in Hartford and Washington, making it harder to successfully obtain the resources and legislation important to our community. Ask any local politician and they can provide you with a stream of anecdotes about deliberations when New Haven has been overlooked as a result of the shrinking size of our electorate. Or look at how it affects politically sensitive funding streams such as the federally-funded Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. CDBG funds crucial services, including housing rehabilitation in blighted neighborhoods, after-school programs for low-income kids, and public health clinics. In the same period that registration in the city has plummeted, our multi-million dollar CDBG pot has been cut by over 25 percent. For the one-third of New Haven children who live under the poverty line, our electoral participation truly impacts the quality of educational programs, housing, and public health initiatives they have access to.

Even if one doesn't buy the argument that declining voter participation is directly linked to negative outcomes, it is hard to argue that declining registration and turnout actually makes it more likely that New Haven will get the resources it needs. Perhaps our apathy doesn't hurt, but it certainly does not help.

Therefore, we must begin to question our assumptions about electoral participation, particularly those about how changing social and economic structures are linked to solving the problems we attempt to tackle through our hands-on community service or direct-action activism.

For example, tutoring a child on a one-on-one basis every week can certainly make a positive difference in their academic and social development. But children in New Haven's public schools also need decent facilities and smaller classroom sizes, which require substantial investment from the state, given our city's small property-tax revenue base. But how is New Haven going to convince the 168 other municipalities in Connecticut to give up the money their constituents pay? Through eloquence? The moral authority inherent in advocating on behalf of economically disadvantaged children? No. New Haven needs political clout. And in the real world, one important source of that clout is derived from voters' ability to determine election outcomes.

Radical activists might counter that while voter power is important, corporate money flowing to politicians' campaign coffers ultimately rules the day, making politics a useless endeavor except for those with money. Yet if the dominance of corporate money were so pervasive, how could one explain the fact that the predominantly Democratic Connecticut Legislature passed an ambitious and comprehensive publicly financed campaigns bill, only to be vetoed by the governor? Or the fact that the bipartisan, soft-money banning Shays-Meehan bill actually passed the House of Representatives only to be killed in the Senate? The reality is that while corporate money has undue influence, it does not have total and utter control of our democracy. Instead of making the influence of corporations an excuse to justify cynicism about participation in electoral politics, it should be a rallying cry to mobilize against those that work against reform. And this doesn't mean just shaming candidates once they are elected. It means aggressively and pragmatically running or supporting candidates who advocate reform. But for such a strategy to work, the individuals who wish for reform have to be on the voting rolls.

Ultimately, I would ask Yalies to recognize we are over one-tenth of New Haven's voting age population, so we play a sizeable role in establishing the city's political power. And that as forward-looking young people interested in issues such as better schools and an end to corporate control of policy-making, we must use our votes to further those ends in New Haven, and not cripple progress through apathy.

Julio Gonzalez, CC '99, is the New Haven Ward One Alderman.

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