I was sixteen during the 2016 election, not yet old enough to vote, but not immune from the consequences of the rhetoric and policies being debated. From health care to immigration to education to gun violence, the policies being proposed would impact my generation for the rest of our lives. When I heard the discourse surrounding the 2016 campaign season, I felt fully responsible to become educated on the political process, stay informed, and get involved.

Throughout that year leading up to the primary, I served as an Organizing Fellow for a candidate whose values aligned with mine. I knocked on doors, made thousands of phone calls, canvassed, and cleaned up after events. It was the grunt work any first-time staffer would do and I loved it. For the first time in my life, what I said, what I did, and if I showed up felt like it would impact people beyond me and my immediate surroundings.

Who is School Meant to Serve?

After the campaign, I was left with a new sense of voice, community, and confidence. I could navigate institutions and democratic processes, and I felt included in the space of social justice activism.

Unfortunately, I was also in the minority of students leaving high school who felt like my voice mattered and I could take action on issues I cared about. This led me to question the purpose and practice of “school” as I knew it:

Can we really say that school prepares students for the real world if they aren’t taught how to participate in the democratic institutions that we are taught to have pride in? How can school become a means to make politics, policy, government, and social change feel accessible to young people?

Changemaking Peers Asking Big Questions

My commitment to these questions introduced me to two student leaders, Merrit Jones and Ian Coon, who were deeply involved in their own questions about equity, school funding, and student representation. They led me to Student Voice, the nation’s leading by-students, for-students non-profit organization that leads and strengthens the student movement for equitable schools.

Merrit and Ian welcomed me into a community of young people who refused to believe the conventional narrative that they were too young to make a difference. With Merrit and Ian’s mentorship and support, I became involved in Student Voice during my senior year of high school. Three years later, I am now the Director of Strategy, overseeing our programs that support students as they find their voices, similar to how my campaign experience empowered me to discover my voice.

Full-time College Student, with a Twist

In January of 2019 we launched Student Voice’s Tour Across America’s Schools. Each week I visit a different school in the United States.

Through roundtables and solutions-based workshops, the Tour Across America’s Schools activates and equips students as changemakers in their communities. Since January, we’ve conducted 60 tour stops in 37 different cities, working with 3,440 young people.

I’m proud to be doing this work as an undergraduate student at Barnard College. As a full-time student I’m in class Monday through Wednesday, leaving campus Wednesday night to travel to that week’s destination. Much of my time is spent in transit: I participate in conference calls on the bus to the airport, I do homework on airplanes, I listen to audiobooks of my readings while driving.

Education or Activism – Should We Have to Choose?

In the current structure of higher education, I often feel like I must choose between education and activism.

Most student activists I know were forced to take gap years or semesters in order to continue with their work. My administration also suggested this when I told them about the opportunity to lead the national tour. I couldn’t consider this option as doing so would change my class standing and take away my guaranteed housing.

Higher education institutions put student activists in a complex position:

Colleges want young people to start organizations, lead campaigns to prove our capabilities, and showcase our merits via the admissions process, yet they expect us to commit fully to academia the moment we begin our degree.

This breeds a contradictory culture of students starting organizations and initiatives in high school to improve their college applications and thrusts them into a culture that doesn’t back up the continuation of this work once arriving on campus.

3,440 Young People and Counting

Each of the 3,440 young people I’ve worked with on tour can be a changemaker in their school, community, state, and country. I continue to wonder how higher education can support them continuing these pathways post-high school.

A practical step is for universities to better support their students in their changemaking initiatives through funding and class credit for their work. There is just as much to be learned in working through activism as there is to be learned in a classroom. I suggest we all make strides to transition to credit students for the hands-on work they do outside of academia.

It excites me to see this call-to-action become stronger as more students find their voices and expression as changemakers. Each day the community I serve through Student Voice reminds me of this growing changemaker spirit. Students everywhere are investing significant time, energy, and expertise into active contribution in their communities and beyond.

These skills-in-action don’t simply complement their college journey, it enhances it in ways that make their participation and contribution to their colleges even more valuable.

Not only should students have the permission to be involved, but they should be rewarded for the legitimacy and importance of their activism – a skill critical for any changemaker of our time.