Speakers Engage with Students About Citizenship and Action

The morning sun broke brightly through the windows of Memorial Chapel, as students filed into the pews for a special all-school meeting on Oct. 4. Listening to the chatter and rustling of feet, it was easy to forget that America is in the midst of one of the most contentious election cycles in modern memory.

With the November general election just a month away, NMH invited Democratic political analyst Symone Sanders-Townsend and former U.S. Rep. William Hurd of Texas to campus for a discussion with students on a broad range of topics.

The conversation, part of this year’s school-wide learning theme of “citizenship and action,” touched on voter engagement, effective media consumption, and the importance of being involved in the electoral process. “The times we live in are hard,” Head of School Brian Hargrove told the students. “You need to be engaged in the process; you need to be educated. Our mission is to empower you to act with humanity and purpose.”

While their politics and expertises differ widely, both speakers stressed that students must engage in the civic process and understand the power they have as voters and world citizens.

Humble beginnings

Thursday’s events began with the all-school presentation, moderated by history and social science teacher and NMH UPenn Fellow Katie Hunt. Hurd and Sanders-Townsend later visited several classrooms, where they engaged in in-depth conversations with students. 

In the chapel, the first question posed by a student was one of identity – specifically, how each speakers’ upbringing influenced their political beliefs.

Sanders-Townsend, an MSNBC cable news host who rose to prominence through her work with the Bernie Sanders campaign and the Biden-Harris administration, credited her small-town upbringing in North Omaha, Nebraska, with imbuing her with the skills needed for coalition-building in the political sphere.

“My particular community is one where we all go to church on Sunday,” she said, noting the commonality of such spaces, regardless of one’s class or political persuasion. “You're in church with the executives at Union Pacific, the mayor, the police chief, but also the janitor, folks that clean the school.”

Hurd, the son of a mixed-race couple, said he was bullied frequently while growing up in Texas. Those experiences, and the institutional racism his parents and community faced in his youth, motivated him to become a public servant.

A former CIA officer, representative of Texas’ 23rd congressional district, and presidential candidate, Hurd emphasized that his connections to his constituents kept him grounded and authentic during his time in office.

“I was lucky,” he reminisced. “When I look at the neighborhood I grew up in, there's no other member of Congress from Deer Run, [Texas]. Many people had a different experience.”

Every vote matters

Several questions during the moderated discussion and subsequent classroom conversations focused on the role an individual plays in the democratic process. 

Hurd emphasized that many elections are decided by the slimmest of margins, noting that he lost his first election bid by 600 votes. He added that low voter turnout during primaries and local elections amounted to missed opportunities to decide who directly represents you and what issues those candidates focus on.

In a typical year, “68% of registered voters vote in November, when we have only about 24% consistently voting in primaries,” he said. “So it does matter, and it requires us to engage.”

Motivating younger voters to turn out can be a challenge, however, Sanders-Townsend noted. She recalled the surprising amount of nihilistic sentiment she found in recent conversations with young voters across the country.

“Democracy is only as strong as people are willing to fight for it,” Sanders-Townsend said. “That fight looks different in many ways, shapes, and forms, but the important part of the fight is participating.”

Beyond the basics

While it is the baseline duty of citizens to vote, said Hurd, there is more to driving political change than simply showing up at the polls. Politicians can’t be experts on every topic, he explained, and a successful administration often relies on citizens to bring fresh ideas to the table. 

Hurd referenced the creation of Blackwell School National Park. Established in July, the park preserves a 1909 adobe schoolhouse structure, one of the last extant examples of the “separate but equal” facilities Latinx students in the Southwest were required to attend prior to school integration in 1965. Its preservation plays a vital role in telling the story of discrimination against Latinx communities during this time period, as well as their resilience in the face of such obstacles.

“This was all the effort of a California woman going to a member of Congress [himself], who didn't know anything about the issue, but said, ‘Do these couple things,’” Hurd said. “And in five years, she took something to that level.”

Speaking to students in an advanced statistics class later that morning, Sanders-Townsend pointed to the efforts of former U.S. Rep. Stacey Abrams to register and engage first-time voters in Georgia, which she said changed the political landscape of the state, and ultimately of the country, in the last election cycle.

“It is only possible that now Georgia is a competitive place for Democrats and Republicans, because they've grown the electorate,” Sanders-Townsend said. “Voting is just one tool in the toolbox of democracy. Think about what you can do for any issue that you care about.”

‘Social’-ly conscious

One tool that’s becoming increasingly more important in the process of communication with the electorate is social media. Hurd and Sanders-Townsend both spoke to the role social media plays in politics, as well its potential pitfalls.

Hurd referenced political movements like the Arab Spring, as well as the success of his own congressional run, that wouldn’t have happened without social media. Due to social media’s relatively unregulated nature, however, its users have to do extra work to ensure the information they glean from those platforms comes from a credible source, he added.

“One thing we can all do is be better, conscious users,” Hurd said. “We're not encouraging the behavior that we want to see [online].”

Sanders-Townsend pointed out that social media is not used by large parts of the voting constituency and isn’t always reflective of the populace’s sentiments on particular issues. She voiced a desire to see media literacy taught at the high school level and cautioned students against the information echo-chambers that social media outlets easily afford users. 

“We live in an ecosystem where we can literally self-select to only be surrounded on social media by people we agree with,” Sanders-Townsend observed. “We have to go the extra mile to take ourselves outside of that, to see a different person, to see a new perspective.”

Heirs of democracy

Filtering through the glut of information and actively engaging in the democratic process may seem like a lot to handle, especially when juxtaposed with the other demands of daily life. But both Hurd and Sanders-Townsend reminded students that the ability to have a voice in your country’s future is a privilege not found in many other parts of the world.

“Democracy is fragile,” Hurd said. “It always has been fragile, it always will be fragile, and the only way it continues is when the population gets involved.”

While it may seem messy at times, governments that reflect the varying opinions of their populaces are often more effective in the long run, he added, noting that some of America’s landmark legislative achievements — the Americans with Disability Act, the Clean Water Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — were passed by “divided” governments.

The beauty of our system, said Sanders-Townsend, is that it gives people a voice in how their lives are governed and the ability to change it when needed.

“Representative democracy is an accountability mechanism,” she told students. “If the elected officials are not accountable to anyone, then what incentive do they have to act in all of our best interests?”

— By Max Hunt