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STAR-TELEGRAM/RODGER MALLISON
Tamika Smikle and Christina Hernandez register to vote with help from Claire Forshey on Tuesday at the TCC Trinity River Campus.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram posted an article on their website Wednesday in which the writer, Diane Smith, commented on the apparent main issues of concerns to college students that will play a factor in this upcoming presidential election. The two main topics Smith focused on were centered around student debt and job availability after graduation. She portrayed other key issues present in this presidential debate, like the economy and healthcare, as “not-so-sexy topics” for “first-time voters” or college students. Smith also reported political experts’ prediction of a significant drop in the number of youth voters and attributed this decrease to the absence of the “cool factor” of Barack Obama’s 2008 “hope and change” campaign. By using such diction as “not-so-sexy” and the “cool factor,” and by focusing almost solely on the issues of student debt and jobs after graduation, Smith tries to appeal to college students but does so in a completely stereotypical and overly generalized manner that actually distances her from this younger generation.
Just as women and minorities are often underrepresented and stereotyped in the media, young people are frequently portrayed in articles concerning either employment or crime. In this particular article in the Star Telegram, the youth is once again present in association with job availability and is actually alienated from more “grown-up” concerns such as health care and the economy. This stereotype, however, completely generalizes college students and neglects many of the concerns that they too may have in the 2012 election. While some students may be focused on the issue of student loans, many university students are not on loan at all and would, therefore, not be as interested in that subject. Also, while jobs after graduation is a concern of a lot of college students face, others may be equality worried about other factors beyond graduation such as health care. Therefore, it is impossible to pin-point the main concerns of “first-time” voters because there are various issue that attain to a wide-range of students beyond the mere two mentioned in Smith’s article. We as college students actually make-up a large portion of the consumers of media content. If the media continues to misrepresent us and place college students into a collectively similar small group, they will begin to alienate their greatest asset and largest audience and gradually ruin themselves until they finally begin to acknowledge us as their most important consumer necessary for the media’s success as an industry.
To watch an interview with Tarrant County College student, Nathaniel Peoples, click here
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