Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Collegians find politics and fun can be good mix
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
DELAWARE, Ohio — Put the words “college students” and “party” in the same sentence, and politics may not be the subject that comes to mind.
But last weekend at Ohio Wesleyan University in this city a half-hour's drive north of Columbus, about 200 students gathered in Gray Chapel for a mock Republican presidential nominating convention, a quadrennial tradition on the Delaware campus since 1884.
For some, like 22-year-old Nicole Dailey of Cleveland, the weekend of balloting, speech-making and platform fights was second nature for those who grew up around politics, where it was talked about around the dinner table and voting was an obligation.
For others, though, the mock convention — Republican, this year, because Ohio Wesleyan always stages the presidential election year event featuring the party out of power
— was the first taste of politics.
“There are a lot of young people who see politics and voting as something they can pass off; it's not a priority,” said Ms. Dailey, a politics and government senior who was convention director for “Mock 2K.”
“This makes it real for them,” she said.
On the Delaware campus, and at a Xavier University government class where students are learning practical politics by role-playing through Cincinnati City Council sessions, young people are learning that the political process does have meaning in their lives.
At Ohio Wesleyan, Ms. Dailey and the 200 other young people who ended up nominating John McCain for president and Elizabeth Dole for vice president are part of a generation of 18- to 24-year-olds who rank dead last among voter groups in participation.
Two years ago, national polls showed that 32 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted in congressional elections, the lowest percentage since 1972, when 18-year-olds first won the right to vote.
It is not that young people don't have issues they care about, said Joan McLean, the Ohio Wesleyan political science professor who organized the mock convention. “There are issues they are interested in, but they don't make the connection that the political process can make an impact on the things they care about,” Ms. McLean said.
Connecting issues to politics, Ms. McLean said, was one of the goals of the mock convention. With the delegates gathered under state standards in front of a high podium constructed by a campus fraternity, the young people debated the issues — abortion, health care, education, affirmative action, the fate of Elian Gonzalez and a host of others — as they hammered out a “Republican” platform.
Most of the discussion was serious, but the students managed to have fun, too, in an atmosphere that closely matched the controlled chaos of the real thing, even down to the continually blaring air horns and funny headgear, as with the Kentucky delegation, which wore KFC buckets on their heads throughout the convention.
For Juanita Marner, a 20-year-old Mennonite from rural Illinois who headed up the Pennsylvania delegation (“because so many Mennonites live there”), the horseplay was part of the education.
“I recruited a lot of people, and when they told me they weren't really interested in politics, they were the perfect people to get involved,” said Ms. Marner, a politics and journalism student. “Now they see how much fun this can be.”
Many of the students at the mock convention were pretending to be Republicans — like Ms. Dailey, a Democratic precinct executive back home in Cleveland.
But others, like 22-year-old senior David DeBord of Portsmouth, Ohio, were serious Republicans. Mr. DeBord heads the campus GOP club and, as an Oregon delegate, was the convention's rules chairman.
“Most of them are pretending to be Republicans,” Mr. DeBord said. “But it's OK. This gets people interested in politics.
“It's fun,” he said. “I don't know if it has been because of all the scandals in recent decades, but the fun in politics seemed to have disappeared. I believe it can be fun and make a difference. It's not all sleazy.”
Saturday morning, the delegates went through nominating and seconding speeches for four candidates — Mr. McCain, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, former Ambassador Alan Keyes and pop star David Cassidy, late of the Partridge Family, the candidate of the New Mexico delegation.
The faculty members had hoped no candidate would win on the first ballot — “so we could have some haggling,” said Professor Carl Pinkele. But, after a speech by Mr. McCain's Ohio coordinator, Lt. Col. Dave Ford, one of Mr. McCain's fellow prisoners in a North Vietnamese prison, 128 of the 183 delegates went for Mr. McCain on the first ballot. Mr. Bush finished last, with 14 delegates. Mrs. Dole was nominated for vice president.
“It was a good experience,” Ms. Dailey said, as the convention wound down Saturday afternoon. “I think we learned a lot.”
About 140 miles to the south, in Xavier University's Logan Hall, students in Gene Beaupre's urban government class are having a different kind of learning experience.
This semester, they are role-playing their way through the city of Cincinnati's budget process, with students playing the parts of council members, city administrators, lobbyists and the press.
One day last week, they stepped out of character for an afternoon session and talked about their generation's participation in the political process. The consensus was that young people tend not to vote because they don't hear politicians speaking to them.
“A lot of campaigns are geared around adult issues, issues that our parents and grandparents are interested in,” said 21-year-old Kris Kober. “People our age tend not to take the time to educate themselves on the issues. Other things seem more important.”
Ron Wallace, at 36, the oldest student in Mr Beaupre's class, said that as the 20-somethings leave school, get jobs and start raising families, “they are bound to get more involved.”
“When you're out in the real world trying to make a living, what politicians do means a lot more to you,” Mr. Wallace said.
Chris Demers, 22, said he hopes “for the sake of the country” that Mr. Wallace is right.
“If our generation hardly votes, and our children's generation votes even less,” Mr. Demers said, “who's going to be left?”
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