The Faculty of Public Affairs (FPA) and political engagement organization Samara Canada hosted the first event of FPA Connects on Sept. 29. The event was titled “Engage” and was hosted to raise awareness of political activity of young citizens.
FPA dean André Plourde said making students more aware is a key part of the faculty’s activities.
“I feel [educating voters] is an important part of the mission of our faculty,” Plourde said.
Attendance of the event was varied. While some Carleton students were in attendance, there were also individuals and activists from the Ottawa community at large. Oxfam, Equal Voice, and Elections Canada were all present and had tables at the event. There was also live music.
The main event of Engage was a screening of the documentary The Drop: Why Young People Don’t Vote. This was followed by a guest panel, including the director of the documentary Kyle McCachen, Ferguson activist Maalik Shakoor, and former Toronto mayoral candidate Morgan Baskin, who ran for office at the age of 18.
McCachen said the documentary had originally started as a smaller film project based around the Vancouver municipal elections. However, when filming began, McCachen said he encountered a problem.
“Young people were unaware about the election itself. That was strange,” McCachen said. He added this led the documentary to investigate the diminishing youth vote in general in North America. He found there is a lack of engagement between youth and politicians.
“Less than half of young people are contacted by political parties, they aren’t even bothering to robocall us,” Baskin said. “The take-home message is you need to educate yourself . . . Voting is only one way to measure political activity.”
The panel emphasized that voting is not the only method of political activity.
“You need people in the street to make noise, [as well as] people on the inside to take action,” Shakoor said.
Second-year economics student Emilio Sabastico said he was pleased with the event overall.
“[The event had] great discussion, [a] great variety of people in the crowd,” Sabastico said. “It was great to see.”
The next event in FPA Connects, titled “Elect,” will be held on Oct. 19. The event will include a live stream of the election results, along with a discussion of the implication those votes carry with them, according to Plourde.
