As the 2018 midterm elections wrapped up, it was almost as if it didn’t affect the students. Out of a poll of 150 students, 59% of them didn’t even pay attention to the elections at all.

Social Studies teacher David Valdez insisted that voting was the one, major thing that we have control over. Especially since many of us aren’t old enough to vote, Valdez still emphasizes how our generation can be the ones to make the change for the future.

“I think it’s important to watch the process because it’s going to be them,” Valdez said. “The generation that we have now, the millennials, are just as big as the baby boomers, but the difference is that the baby boomers vote.”

Even though the millennials are older than high school students, they still have a huge impact over high school students as Generation Z. They are the next large group of people that is close to us that we look up to, especially politically. We watch what decisions they make and how those decisions affect our future.

Sophomore Halle Wist paid attention because her father was actually running for the Colorado House of Representatives. “I did a lot of campaigning with [my father], and so I got to learn how that’s really hard from that perspective. You have a lot of people who see ads everywhere that get really sick of it during the election, so it’s hard to stand out from other candidates,” she said. “Through his loss, he learned that the voters changed. They were looking more at whether the candidate was a Democrat or Republican rather than the bills they had done or the things they were more focused on.”

That was one difference with these elections. Before the last presidential election, the voters involved were more worried about whether the winner was blue or red rather than the actual changes the politicians wanted to make.

“It was more specific, this election, on what side you want to take,” Wist said.