Roving Teen Reporter: Reactions to Trump Policies

Regardless of political affiliation, it is safe to say that the Trump administration has brought forth dramatic changes in a matter of three months. Teenagers react to the new political style, perhaps with more interest and emerging opinions as they approach the legal voting age and find national policies quickly influential on a personal level.

“I think that as a girl, [the current political climate is] probably more scary for me than it would be for someone whose reproductive rights aren’t at risk,” an anonymous high school student said. “And it feels really disorganized too. And I think that’s part of what makes me so on edge, because I feel like if [abortion] hasn’t been an issue before, why is it an issue now, just because there’s now an element of religious influence in politics more than there was before.”

In addition to the ongoing abortion debate, the student touched on the LGBTQ and gender policies that have been proposed so far.

“It feels like it’s getting continuously not inclusive … And the big part of what makes our home … so nice is that there’s cultural diversity, and I think that by taking a more nationalistic approach and trying to reduce cultural diversity, [it’s] preventing us from moving forward [in] a positive way,” the student said.

For Sylvia Olson, a high school senior heading into college next year, the administration’s handling of campus activism is a concern.

“The idea that if the views that were peacefully protested for and advocated for aren’t in line with the political preferences of the political administration in power right now we could get expelled or the school could lose its funding … seems like a pressing issue for teenagers who are going into college right now, and also for teenagers who are trying to apply to college and look at [ones] that aren’t gonna get their funding slashed in half because they had a protest,” Olson said.

The administration’s handling of immigration issues has captured her attention as well.

“I would say the handling of immigration has been a big one,” Olson said. “I mean, we live right next to the border. My family’s half Mexican … I didn’t realize that [even the] people with green cards or legal permanent residen[cy] and all the stuff that isn’t full citizenship but [prove that they are] legally here … are getting deported for peacefully protesting, and it just seems like an infringement of rights, which I think is a pretty dramatic thing.”

Further immigration policies, the future of nationally legalized same-sex marriage and abortion rights are topics that Olson will be attentive to in the future.