The Apathetic Generation

Around 60 Stuyvesant students, myself included, walked out of our fifth period classes to Union Square at 11:00 a.m. on May 27, 2024. There, we met with around 440 other New York City students in a citywide walkout to protest President Donald Trump’s violations of the U.S. Constitution. The walkout was organized by seniors at The Bronx High School of Science who founded We the Students, a student-led organization that organizes action and protest aimed at upholding American constitutional democracy and rights. As a student coordinator of the walkout, I handed out flyers, explaining what and why we were protesting. As I did, I found a general reluctance to protest or walk out amongst the Stuyvesant community; almost everyone had already heard about the protest through either Instagram or word-of-mouth. Just as many had already decided they wouldn’t be attending. 

The 60 Stuyvesant students who protested made up less than two percent of the student body, meaning 98 percent chose not to.

Students had reasons for not protesting—tests, strict parents, fear of getting in trouble, and even fear of association with the protests while being undocumented. However, many reasons did not stem from these concerns—they stemmed from apathy. For those of us who are privileged enough to defend our rights and to care about our radically changing government, it is crucial to protest.

General apathy towards politics isn’t unique to Stuyvesant. Online politics and federal changes are often “filtered into jokes,” meaning political events are reposted and shared first as news, then as memes or humor. Consequently, we begin to associate the drastic change with humor instead of our government. For example, when ICE began raids and deportations without due process, it wasn’t long before memes about people’s friends being deported circulated through Instagram and TikTok. For another, following the brief threat of an Iran-U.S. war, For-You-Pages were filled with jokes about the things people wanted to do before World War III. None of this is inherently negative: satire and jokes are the most human ways to deal with drastic threats and changes in our political climate. The issue is when such a culture of jokes fuels desensitization, and subsequently, apathy. 

When our generation primarily hears about ICE in the form of jokes or memes, the horrors slip away from the forefront of our memory. There has been an 807 percent increase in the arrest of immigrants with no criminal records from Trump’s inauguration to June, making up 70 percent of immigrants held in ICE custody. Beyond tearing immigrant communities apart, these raids blatantly ignore the Constitution, Habeas Corpus, and Trump’s empty promises to target ‘violent criminal immigrants,’ setting a terrifying standard of exactly zero checks of power for Trump’s actions. Trump’s blatant disregard for the political procedures that both built and maintained every legal system in America threaten the futures of every single American—our rights are protected by the Constitution, Habeas Corpus, and the law, and the president is no longer binding himself to any of them.
Beyond apathy, many students shared that they were deterred from protesting by a feeling of hopelessness. Our country’s political climate is changing so rapidly that it’s often difficult to track what should be happening, and it feels like there’s absolutely nothing that individuals, especially young individuals, can do. Hopelessness has deterred people from protesting against injustice as long as injustice has existed: Trump’s unconstitutional changes to our country rely on Americans feeling too despondent to try to protest. The truth is, protest is the one power the people do have, and for generations and generations, Americans have used protest as a primary tool to achieve change. 

It is natural to feel completely hopeless in the face of the scale of negative changes, but as our despondence and desensitization to the political climate grows, so do the unconstitutional changes made by the Trump administration, which subsequently grows the necessity for our generation to protest.

Ironically, education, the very thing keeping many from participating in school walkouts and protests, is being threatened by the Trump administration. Some of Stuyvesant’s political apathy is indeed rooted in college applications—not just regarding reluctance to protest or walkout, but putting energy, thought, or time towards politics at all. As I walked through the halls the days leading up to the walkout, I found that many Stuyvesant students felt that politics was too foreign a world for them to be invested in. They attributed their lack of political action to not being “a political person” or to their focus being on places other than current events. But the issue is that politics—the thing so many students are shutting out—encompasses every aspect of our futures, especially as students with ambitions for higher education. As Trump’s policies threaten universities, it’s imperative that we allow a little time and energy to fight for our future.

For many students across the country, Trump’s actions begin to jeopardize education starting in elementary, middle, and high school. On January 29, Trump issued an executive order enabling federal funds for public education to be used as private school vouchers. On paper, the administration claimed this school voucher program would give students more opportunities and choice in their education. In reality, this will likely only support students who already attend private school and cut into the quality and even existence of many public schools, evidenced by states that have already adopted similar plans. Accessible public education is fundamental to ensuring that all of American society is knowledgeable about our rights and history and has the opportunity to pursue careers and higher education. Without robust public education systems, class disparity worsens, meaning there are even fewer opportunities for marginalized and low-income youth. Ultimately, the understanding of how American politics and government work lessens. This takes even more power out of the hands of the people.

But through youth action, we can begin to take the power back.

Throughout American history, youth have been the backbone of movements for justice and progress. One thing that makes youth action crucial and unique from protests in general is that our generation will inherit America. This means the actions and beliefs of our generation are naturally seen as a projection of our country’s future. This adds weight and potential visibility or press to any movement youth lead. Our generation is typically expected to be in school Monday through Friday. This means when we temporarily abandon our strict expectations, we gain even more attention and press. The main goal of civil disobedience (besides cultivating a feeling of determination and unity) is to gain the attention of those in charge of making change. Historically, when youth have led movements big enough to gain traction and press, they have been able to influence the entire course of American history.

It’s our generation’s turn to inherit the legacy of youth advocacy in America, and it’s crucial we both learn from the past and not allow ourselves to fall into the easy traps of political apathy.   

In the context of today’s political climate, youth advocacy makes space for students everywhere to learn how to use their voice to express thoughts and opinions—the quieter we get, the louder we can hear the voices of Trump and his administration. 

The most dramatic shift in the role of youth in shaping American policy resulted from student protests against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Rather than a coordinated, organization-based approach to protest, students protesting the war mobilized extremely quickly. Many students began to get suspended for skipping class and protesting. The suspensions escalated to the Supreme Court, which ultimately determined the right for students to peacefully protest and express their political views at school. 

Their quick-mobilization, reactionary strategy, and, even more importantly, the information that the US Constitution is on our side, should aid us in our fight. The Trump administration and other leaders try to assert that protests against our leaders are anti-American by owning the image of American flags and labelling us as extremists in order to invalidate our fight. In reality, student advocacy is the foundation of equality in America and a guaranteed right by the Supreme Court; the ones violating American values and the Constitution are those currently in governmental power.

Maybe students’ desire for big change is a combination of youthful energy, naivety, anger, and excitement. Maybe it’s the prospect of the future of our lives and country that looms overhead. Regardless, it’s clear that our generation is in a unique position to advocate, as we can both look back to a history of youth protest strategies and look forward to a future deeply in need of protest.