Fall on Campus | Photo by Harminder Singh Langri | The Wright State University
On Monday, Oct. 21, the Progressive Student Coalition hosted two guest speakers, who came to the Student Union to talk to students about Issue 1. These women gave a presentation, explaining all of the facets of the issue, and held an open dialogue for questions and comments.
What is Issue 1?
Citizens Not Politicians, a grassroots organization, proposed Ohio's Issue 1 to help prevent gerrymandering, which is the redrawing of districts to further the political gain of the party that is in power at a given time.
Currently, politicians in power control the creation of these districts. Issue 1 offers to redistribute this power to a group of citizens.
This group would comprise five Democratic voters, five Republican voters and five Independent voters.
The current team is seven politicians, two of which are representatives from the Democratic party, two from the Republican party and the remaining three are the Governor, the Auditor and the Secretary of State.
The idea is that, by giving the power to redistrict to citizens instead of politicians, there will be less bias, and it will end gerrymandering in Ohio.
Presentation
MJ Dodson and Jill Becker were both invited by Wright State University’s PSC. They worked with Citizens Not Politicians to put together their presentation.
“It was hard to make on campuses because a lot of faculty members can't sponsor something like that because it's a publicly funded university,” Becker said in an interview.
Daniel Wasniewski is the president of the PSC and helped facilitate the event. Through the PSC, he arranged for Dodson and Becker to come to WSU.
“We planned the Issue One town hall, really to raise awareness of the purpose and intentions of the state constitutional amendment to clear up any misconceptions that anyone in the campus community might have surrounding the amendment itself,” Wasniewski said.
Dodson gave the majority of the presentation and expressed that this issue is not, or should not be, Republicans versus Democrats.
“I want to say from the get-go, this is not Republicans, bad, Democrats good. Both sides do it, even our gerrymandered maps, there are Democrats who got what they wanted in the gerrymandered district and Republicans who got what they wanted in the gerrymandered district,” Dodson said.
Dodson answered many questions from students and had slides that showed figures regarding gerrymandering in the past. Using these, she shared all the information students needed on the topic's history.
“People who are cartographers, who specialize in demographics and things like that, they are the ones that do the grunt work on redistricting, and they will do the grunt work just like they do now,” Dodson said.
If Issue 1 passes, the difference will be in who gets those demographics and decides what to do with them.
Student opinions
Going into the town hall, most students expressed their confusion about Issue 1 and what it would be doing.
Brian Olinger, a sophomore political science major, was vocal during the town hall.
“I've seen signs that specifically say Republicans vote no,” Olinger said. “My mom and my stepfather are both Republicans.” He went on to explain that his mom expressed to him that she had heard that a vote no was a vote to end gerrymandering.
This perspective, as Olinger went on to state, is not quite the case, and Dodson’s presentation cleared that up further.
Gabriel Foreman is a sophomore psychology major at WSU who attended the town hall with one of his friends.
“My grandmother asked if she's a Democrat, but she didn't understand the language of Issue 1, like, are we supposed to vote yes or no? Like, what is the right answer here? And I think it's because of the wording, the way it's presented, it's very hard to actually understand what it does and what it's for,” Foreman said.
Throughout the event, these students were able to gain information from the conversation as well as from the printouts that were provided by Dodson and Becker.
“We had a very good, productive discourse, I think, between members of the campus community,” Wasniewski said.
Early voting is open now. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5.
