Myla Sayer

Professor Shari Sowards

Politics 1100
25 October 2014
Standings on Political Views
In recent years, it seems as if political awareness, especially among young people,
has been greatly decreasing. For example, in my Politics class, there was someone who
did not even know who the president was. Only 70 percent knew in my class knew who
the vice president wasthat is roughly 3 out of every 10 people who did not even know
the name of the person who would take charge of our country if anything happened to the
president. Those are only the larger and better-known positions present over the entire
country.
Even fewer people are aware of who exactly represents us in the state of Utah. In
my class alone, one-quarter or fewer people could name just one Utah Senator or House
Representative, as well as our governor. It seems as if people are generally even less
aware of state politics and representatives because they are not made public state- and
country-wide nearly as often. If we, as American citizens, are not even fully aware of the
two most important people in charge, how are we supposed to even begin to comprehend
lesser representation? Young people especially feel as if they do not even really need to
understand a majority of politics and the representation that we are lucky to receive.
In regards to stances on political issues, college students may not even be at all
qualified to give opinions in the first place, due to general lack of knowledge. However,
various opinions are always important to be aware of, especially when regarding national

and global issues. For example, my politics class was a 10-question survey that addressed
various national issues.
There was a near unanimous class vote in favor of citizens right to keep and bear
arms, as well as disapproval of the NSAs surveillance of American citizens. There were
a couple issues that had results with a 2:3 ratio, such as favors for physician-assisted
suicide for terminally ill patients if the patient chooses it, same sex marriages to be
recognized by states and federal government, and universal health care for all citizens.
Issues such as promoting additional tax cuts to stimulate the economy, a more restrictive
immigration policy, and the United States having a stronger military stance towards other
countries and terrorists produced results that were very close to half in agreement and
half in disagreement.
Although these were the results for my class, it should be same to assume that
some of the people who provided answers on the survey did not know very much about at
least a couple of the given issues, and therefore just had to give unknowledgeable and
quick responses without giving too much actual thought to the issues themselves.
In terms of liberal and conservative, it would be safe to assume that among my
class, roughly half were liberal and half were conservative, based on the class responses
on the survey. Of the ten asked questions, five had majority answers that favored the
liberal side, as the other five had majority answers that favored the conservative side.
The assumptions made on this paper were simply made by carefully reviewing the
questions and the resulting answers, and is in no way stating that anyone is for certain of
a specific viewpoint. Every person has a different amount of knowledge on any given
topic, and is entitled to have an opinion that noticeably differs from that of anyone else.