MCCC was represented by 28 political science students at the annual Michigan Student Political Issues Conference.
The conference took place on Oct. 1 at Henry Ford Community College.
Colleges from across Michigan were in attendance, with 685 students from six community colleges as well as larger universities like Wayne State and University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Students who participated in the conference attended two general sessions, as well two workshops that the students got to choose.
The workshops focused on several different political issues, ranging from taxation to military operations.
Dr. Joanna Sabo, a political science professor at MCCC, presented her own workshop to students on the war in Afghanistan.
The workshop included a presentation of Afghanistan’s political climate, a discussion on the country’s current president, and a forum where students talked about their views on the war.
MCCC student Amanda Sharpe found Sabo’s workshop to be extremely interesting.
“Dr. Sabo’s session was eye opening. It was informative and revealed a lot of statistics about Afghanistan,” Sharpe said.
“It also allowed us to converse with those who both agreed and disagreed with our opinions. Being that the war in the Middle East is such a critical issue, it was important that we were able to discuss it with other students and get a chance to look at another aspect.”
The main point of the conference, however, was the caucusing sessions in which students took part. Students were broken down into several groups and placed in a room with people from different colleges.
During the caucusing stage, students discussed the issues they talked about in the 18 workshops that were going on and then voted on what issues they would like politicians to address.
Addison Hendrick found caucusing to be the most interesting part of the conference.
“My caucus room was really diverse, and it was really cool to be able to hear all of the different opinions that everyone had. I was surprised by what some people were more concerned with. My room voted on a lot of issues, but global warming had almost double the votes than any other issue,” Hendrick said.
The issue that was deemed most important, which was calculated after taking all the results from the caucus rooms, was the rising cost of higher education, which had 153 student votes.
The issue of unemployment and jobs closely followed, with 144 students votes.
A booth was present to help students registered to vote before the November elections.
Hendrick took advantage of the opportunity and is glad she did.
“After listening to all of the issues out there, I was pretty happy to be able to register to vote. After going to the conference, I think everyone has an obligation to vote.” Hendrick said.
