Local and EU elections are fast-approaching, with people getting ready to cast their votes this Thursday. The Union has prepared lots of resources to help you find your local polling station and discover who is standing in your area, so make sure to check it out in order to make an informed choice.
Imperial has a reputation of being a politically apathetic university with a politically apathetic student body and young people are often stereotyped this way as well. To an extent, I feel that this expectation is often justified. Although I can name my local councillor and local MP (both where I live now and back home), I’m aware that I’m in a minority of people my age and it’s been part of my job to meet these people in various unflattering photo ops.
Truthfully though, it’s not because I don’t care about politics or anything like that, it’s just difficult to get het up about council tax and bin collections and the other mundane activities I associate with local councils. It’s easy to forget that they have a lot of scope over things that do affect my daily life, like regulations over private landlords and personal safety around where I live. Instead, I feel that this stuff just doesn’t affect me and local councillors ultimately aren’t that interested in making my life any better.
This is probably partially true. Politicians are after votes and it doesn’t make sense to put populations that don’t tend to vote at the top of the agenda. Ultimately, if students fail to vote, they will fail to feature on any politician’s radar and student issues will be routinely missed off manifestos. We just simply won’t be worth the effort.
What I’ve found interesting this year is how much potential sway we have, just as Imperial students, in our local wards. You can see here on a ward map of the local area, we have large concentrations of students in certain boroughs who could theoretically sway the results of the elections. Although we may never have much of an effect in safe seats like Knightsbridge and Belgravia, increasing our turnout will prove that we are engaged and paying attention to local issues.
It's easy to get swept up in the rhetoric of 'they're all the same so what does it matter' or feeling that protest voting or not voting in protest is the best way to be heard. Unfortunately, that just makes it easier to be ignored. I won't give you the speech about how people fought and died for your right to vote, I'll just say for five minutes of your time, it's worth a quick walk to your nearest polling station or post box.
