Politics through the eyes of the student body

As more than a dozen presidential candidates compete to be top dog, students at Chaminade will be challenged to decide whether or not to vote in the election next year.

The majority of the students at Chaminade are uninformed about the political events taking place within the nation, including the 2016 presidential candidates’ campaigns. Many will be allowed to vote for the first time in their lives. In addition, students are confronted about educating themselves on the candidates’ views and policies in order to effectively participate in voting and deciding if those beliefs are also his or her own.

According to the Center for Research and Information on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, roughly 22 million young voters between 18- 29 voted in 2012 for the presidency.

Nineteen-year-old Pandora Sebastian is a Salt Lake resident with a major in forensic science. Sebastian sees voting as an important right and feels that if you ignore this duty, then you have no right to complain of the results. However, she is unsure if she will partake in the 2016 election. Depending on her amount of free time, she may research the potential leaders in order to participate. One of her most important points was the character of each candidate.

“What’s they’re intentions, and what are the good things they did,” she said. “Have they tried to cover up something? Are they legitimately who they say they are?”

The students had different feelings on what it would take to win their support in the upcoming election.

Madieline Nava felt that immigration is one of the bigger issues in the election. The 19-year-old student believes that there should be enhanced border security in order to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.

“I’m not against immigrants but I am against undocumentation,” she said. “I do feel it should be a little stricter because a lot of people work really hard to get into the country and to have citizenship, and other people just cheat the system. It’s unfortunate.”

Morgan Jones agrees that immigration is the one of the top issues the nation needs to focus on for 2016. The 21-year-old senior also thought that judicial reform was also a critical point.

“There just needs to be a huge reform with a lot of the judicial stuff … a huge reform,” he said.

Pew Research Center conducted a study to figure out exactly how many illegal immigrants have come into the county. It reported that there were 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2014.

Nava believes that the ability to provide free college to all citizens should be an immediate concern for the nation.

“I think that education is a huge priority because the people that are getting educated right now are going to be the world,” she said. “They’re going to be the leaders and the businessmen and the doctors so we need to have a really educated youth population.”

USA Today had reported that finance experts at Edvisors had figured out that $33,000 was the average amount of loans owed by the class of 2014.

Sebastian is undecided whether he’ll vote in the election in November 2015. Nava wants to wait for the race to be a bit further along before focusing on any campaign. Jones is interested in supporting Republican candidates Dr. Ben Carson or Jeb Bush in 2016, although he isn’t set on either.

Nava is also undecided, but she is interested in learning about Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m mostly Republican but I like don’t to side with a party because then it’s like close-minded to the other candidates.”