During Common Time recently, we caught students outside Sayles and posed an election-themed question, one framed by the student-led organization CarlsVote: What does civic engagement mean to you, and how do you practice it?
Engage critically
Civic engagement means engaging in political discourse. One of the best things we can do to save democracy is engage with it critically: take in opinions that aren’t like yours or come from people that don’t look like you. Talk to people, have fun with it, and remember, not everything has to be taken personally.
— Annanya Sinha ’25
Talk about it
Civic engagement is about participating in government, going out to vote, but also participating in discussions about politics in my community. It’s a hard subject to broach, but it’s very important to have those kinds of conversations with friends and peers.
— Henry Weismann ’24
Branch out
Civic engagement means the ability to communicate with my peers and classmates in a collaborative manner in and out of the classroom—to have conversations with each other and to be open. So, branch out and collaborate with others.
— Patrick Smith ’27
Voting matters
One problem, particularly in communities with a lot of younger people, is that voting is seen as not really having real impact. That thought can be harmful in our electoral process, especially because voting is so much more than the top of the ticket. You have congressional elections, local and state elections, too.
— Max Fischer ’27