It’s time to vote for a better world for people like me.
Disclaimer: This story was written before the 2020 presidential elections took place.
My strained eyes open tab after tab of lengthy Google Documents, endless assignments and school emails as I slowly work through a long day of distance learning. Once finished, I travel a few steps to my bed and instantly fall asleep, exhausted by the day before and ill-prepared for the day ahead.
I am not alone in my distance learning struggles — 40 percent of students nationwide failed to regularly participate in online learning in the spring, according to Chalkbeat. Yet, despite all the constant struggles and hardships that come with navigating high school online, my peers and I have generally accepted this distance learning format as the best possible outcome for the situation we are in. The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the United States, and many of us don’t feel comfortable attending school in-person where we could potentially spread the virus.
But one thing cannot be forgotten — it didn’t have to be this way.
President Trump’s coronavirus response has failed the United States to the point where I do not even get the chance to spend my senior year of high school in person. Still, I am one of the lucky ones. I have a safe and quiet place at home where I can complete my schoolwork, but many others do not have this luxury. The educational loss they have faced during this pandemic could set them behind when applying to colleges in the future, and thus further perpetuate economic inequities. Students who once could venture to school as a place of relief and opportunity now no longer have the option to do so, unless they wish to risk getting themselves and their family members sick.
Heavy decisions like the one above make up just a small portion of the massive stressors students and their families must manage during this pandemic. Students have also lost in-person friendships and socialization, as well as access to some face-to-face counseling and mental health resources. In my community, I see students crying over not only the burden of endless online school assignments but also the fear of accidentally spreading the coronavirus to an immunocompromised family member and losing a loved one.
If Americans elect the candidate who believes in science in this year’s elections, this negative learning experience will improve. Joe Biden’s Roadmap to Reopening Schools details plans for providing schools with adequate PPE, increasing drive-through testing sites, and improving classroom ventilation. President Trump’s platform plans to “eradicate” COVID-19 and return to normal by next year, yet doesn’t share any plans on how this will happen.
When I physically leave my community a year from now to head off to college, the coronavirus will not have magically disappeared like Trump’s platform outlines. Hopefully, it will have instead been managed by Biden’s guidelines and regulations backed by science. I say hopefully because whether or not future college freshmen like myself even get to physically attend college depends on the aforementioned coronavirus response. If we cannot attend in person, then the same dreadful distance learning scenario will simply repeat.
On the local level, electing school board candidates who plan to reopen schools before it is safe to do so could put me and my family’s health at risk. Until we have a president who takes the pandemic seriously, I don’t want local decisions to create a false sense of normalcy and send me to a COVID-infested school, and local elections this year may dictate whether or not this happens.
When I look ahead to my future, I see that it depends on the 2020 elections, and I hope the United States chooses to fight for a better world for people like me.
I know that young people are disillusioned by the voting process. I know that Joe Biden is not the most progressive Democratic nominee young voters hoped for and that the lack of success for candidates like Bernie Sanders disappointed many.
But I also know that other students across the nation and I are tired of strained eyes and endless online school assignments. We have an opportunity to feel rested if we participate in national and local 2020 elections — and that is an opportunity worth taking.
