We Hillsdale students tend to panic every time something goes down in D.C.
During this embarrassing government shutdown, for example, students’ Facebook and Twitter accounts have been flooding our feeds with angry posts about the feds shuttering up the national zoo and monuments or the Obamacare website’s, er, difficulties.
Yes, it’s frustrating that the panda cam is down. But other than making it more difficult to write economics papers based off of government websites, the government shutdown hardly affected us here in Hillsdale, Mich.
What if instead of getting our Bidens in a bunch, we started caring about city politics here in Hillsdale? The decisions our representatives make over on Broad Street have a better chance of directly impacting us than the soap opera that is Pennsylvania Avenue.
On Oct. 22 at 6:30 p.m., WCSR radio and The Collegian will host a forum in Phillips Auditorium with the candidates running for Hillsdale mayor and city council. The candidates will present their ideas and answer questions submitted by the public in advance. All students and community members are welcome to attend.
You, yes you, should submit questions and attend.
You may think “this doesn’t affect me” or “it doesn’t matter because I’m not registered to vote here.” But city council makes the decisions about the quality of the roads you drive on for four years. It has the ability to impact economic development in the city, which could bring more businesses or restaurants that you all would love to see. Too often, we complain about the town we go to school in and say: why can’t Hillsdale College be somewhere more exciting?
Plus, learning about city politics in Hillsdale town fills the void in our political education here at Hillsdale College. So often, we focus on abstract political theory or national elections that, really, we have zero say in. At the risk of beating a dead statistic, we would question why you put so much emotional energy into national elections, for which you have no control, while hardly caring about local ones, which playout less than a mile from our school. We love the idea of a republic, but a republic depends on the citizenry being involved in local politics. We claim to be politically minded, ready to change the world with a tattered copy of “Nicomachean Ethics” in one hand and the Good Book in the other, but we don’t even take the time to find out the who behind the signs set up in front of houses across town.
So attend the forum and make your voice heard. All of your angry tweets did not reopen the federal government and failed to defund Obamacare. Really, you didn’t build that and you’re not going to. You could, however, voice your opinion to the city council. We’re hoping to get some stop signs put in at the awful intersection of West and Fayette Street.
What do you want?