Students for Democracy organization and the Wichita County Democrats partnered to raise awareness for the Nov. 5 election and issues that affect the nation. The groups organized a Women’s March that was held on Saturday, Nov 2. at noon.
The event started at the Akin Auditorium parking lot and wound its way through the campus where the march ended at the amphitheater of the Wichita Falls Museum of Art on the MSU campus.
The groups planned the march about a month in advance. The whole event came together when the Wichita County Democrats were looking for a place to host the march on campus in order to observe the anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Vice president of Students for Democracy Aaron Castillo explained how they first heard about the plans for the march.
“We heard from the Wichita Democratic Association that they were planning to do one in accordance with the national marches to observe the anniversary of the Dobbs Decision of overturning Roe v. Wade, they thought it would be nice if they could get a host for campus, so that we could go through campus and set up here [WFMA amphitheater] and have a venue to speak at the end. So we were fortunately able to host them on campus,” Castillo said.
The Students for Democracy, previously known as the MSU Democrats, underwent a name change in hopes to draw more students to the group. Aaron Castillo, chemical engineer freshman and vice president, sheds light on the name change.
“This started as MSU Democrats, which is a dormant organization, but we decided to do a slight name change, just due to the stigma between party names. We wanted to be a little more bipartisan. We wanted to switch a little bit, switch gears, so that we have our voices heard,” Castillo said.
The main goal behind the organization is to get MSU students involved in politics and help spread the information that they may not know.
“We do political information on campus, we did a voter drive, we did three separate voter drives before the election, we were able to register 48 people on campus, we just try and get people, so they can be up to date,” Music education and spanish major Myles Thomas said.
The main cause behind the formation of the group was the numbers that Gen-Z has when it comes to political turnouts.
“Gen-Z has the lowest voter turnout than any generation, any voting graphic, and so we think it is really important that other people have their voices heard, especially on college campuses, we thought it was really important for people to be politically aware, because you can’t vote properly if you don’t know anything,” Thomas said.
Psychology sophomore Max Bleeker explained some of the reasons students do not want to get involved when it comes to politics. These reasons are why the organization hopes to inspire students to get involved.
“A lot of people in our age range dont really want to get into politics because of the like environment around it that they experienced with their parents or their peers, and they don’t understand that it doesn’t have to be hateful. It doesn’t have to be hard to listen to, and that it is good to know what is going on because it does affect you and it affects everybody,” Bleeker said.
Due to the stigma around political parties the Student for Democracy organization made the decision to stay bipartisan in order to do its job of bringing awareness to students.
“Because people avoid politics due to polarization, and how divisive it is, we are purposefully a bipartisan group and we don’t have any party leaning, we just attempt to spread political information to students,” Thomas said.
