Politics For Teens: A Revitalization for Discourse.

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Politics for Teens is a club formed out of the passion for awareness. It’s a place for students to meet up together and learn about the world. 

“When we first started the club, we really just wanted people who liked politics, who wanted to get involved, not even with politics really but just learning about the world in general..–Outside in the world of politics, things were getting too partisan, so we felt like we just needed a way as young people could get to get together and talk about different issues without having personal drama or personal beef or to understand each others differing opinions a lot better,”  Rizwan Khan, junior and co-president, said.

The club means something to its members as much as it does to their officers. 

“I think being [Co-President] president of Politics for Teens allowed me to have an impact on the members. A lot of the members don’t feel they have a place to say anything, so I hope as a president, I can help members feel as if they have a place where they feel more welcomed and understood,” Harshith Amaram, junior and co-president, said.

A great example of the club in effect occurred on January 23rd, which revolved around the Israel-Palestine Conflict, an issue that holds many sides (that also holds many paradoxes) where it’s difficult to talk about without causing offense. 

Politics for Teens had given a great effort in their discourse, like always, including perspectives from all sides when the debates began. 

“I think there has been a lot of response, especially our last meeting [Israel/Palestine] in that it really hit home for a lot of people, so it created a response for both sides,” Amaram said.

The discourse constituted a debate where peers got to express their perspective on the situation, while the officers stood around to keep neutrality by being on guard and not allowing any specific perspective to dominate and control the debate. 

“One thing we stand by as officers is respecting what everyone has to say because we all have different perspectives, different experiences so all these different things make us unique as people. We all took that in mind and want each other to have respect for each other when we talk about different things,” Khan said.