What is Leadership?

By Kyla Dangerfield
On Wednesday December 9th myself and a few other students went to a Berkeley Unified School District school board meeting to seek their endorsement on two bills that will be presented to senate in the coming months. These bills have the same goal; to lower the voting age to 16 for local elections. Voting is the backbone of a democracy and unfortunately voter turnout in California is very low in comparison to our population. These bills aim to get high school students more civically engaged and understanding the importance of voting as well as giving young adults the capacity to advocate for themselves and for their beliefs. From my experience high school students if given the option to vote, would make informed decisions. This will hopefully increase voter turnout in the long run. We as high school students directly feel the results of the decisions made by the school board and we would like to have an influence on who makes those decisions on our behalf. The students of Berkeley have shown our social activism through protests, unions, campaigns and social justice movements. To truly be informed and active citizens of Berkeley we should have the right to vote. Next we intend to go to other cities school boards and city councils to get their endorsement. From this experience I have learned to effect change in my community and I hope to give other students the same opportunities.

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