Time for Gen Y
Generational shift
Its time for everyone’s favourite democratic privilege — voting.
On Oct. 23, Calgarians will go to the polls to elect a new mayor, city council and school councils in a province wide series of municipal elections.
Following his very successful first term, Mayor Naheed Nenshi is widely expected to be re-elected after he successfully pushed through the airport tunnel, finished the over-budgeted Peace Bridge and lead Calgary through its largest natural disaster – the floods.
Nenshi had previously won his first campaign after Rick McIver and Barb Higgins split a vote, and Nenshi managed to sneak through the middle using what many analysts have said was the youth vote, AKA adults aged 18-30.
Much of Mayor Nenshi’s campaigning was done at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal — where he was previously employed as a professor.
This could mean that the mayor’s past and perhaps future success can be correlated to the decision making of millennial generation that is widely criticized as an entitled generation some right-wing media. This is criticism that should be welcomed and challenged.
The majority of college and university students are now considered part of Generation Y— meaning that political change and decision making will, and to an extent already has, been passed to us.
Rather than take and live in the lazy criticism of some uneducated elders, go out and prove them wrong this semester. The most obvious way to do this is vote — something that polling numbers suggest we don’t always do. Another way to do this is work hard now at MRU and take the jobs away from people that don’t believe in you.
Granted, this view of Gen Y is a generalization of an idea that not all people in older generations share, but it is a disturbingly popular one in mass media and the only way to change that is to move those certain desk jockeys who write the easy story of criticism, out of their positions of power.
We elected arguably one of the most successful mayors in Calgary’s history – now it is time to replace the rest of the old guard.
Enjoy your semester, work hard and don’t stand idle.