Escaping the Cycle of Political Apathy

The next time I hear someone my age complain that our votes are meaningless and that we can't affect the course of politics, I'll have a convincing counterexample.

A junior and a senior from Truman (one of whom is the student association president) co-founded Missourians for Equality, an organization that aims to fight for gay civil rights, according to the Truman Index. The students have recently filed a petition for an amendment to the Missouri constitution to prohibit discrimination against sexual minorities on an equal plane with other protected classes. If Missourians for Equality gathers 150,000 signatures for its petition by May 2014, then the amendment will appear on the ballot that November.

Read the full story by the Index here.

I'm truly impressed by what these students are doing. People my age have the chance to influence Missouri civil rights policy in a potentially historic way. I'm convinced that our generation's political apathy is not nearly as justified as we imagine. Believing that we can't affect the course of events is a self-fulfilling prophecy; these Truman students decided to ignore such thoughts and go ahead and change things.