Andy Sullivan learned the hard way to warm up to young people before interviewing them on the often-obscure topic of politics.

When Sullivan, reporting from the campaign trail for the Medill News Service in Washington, D.C., asked some Native Americans for whom they would vote, they returned his question with blank stares and then walked away.

In that case it’s a Navajo custom to ignore people who don’t introduce themselves, but Medill sophomore Abbas Khan often has received the same reaction from young people responding to his questions about politics.

That’s why Khan appreciated Sullivan’s story as advice at the conference that “Y Vote 2000: Politics of a New Generation” hosted at Northwestern Friday through Sunday.

Medill began Y Vote 2000 about a year ago to send graduate students to cover the campaign in ways aimed toward 18- to 24-year-olds.

Nine NU students and 36 other student journalists heard advice on engaging the politically unconnected Generation Y from professional journalists and Medill graduate students who followed the campaign. For instance, they talked about why only 11 percent of first-time voters voted in the 1998 congressional election. Khan blamed, in part, the mainstream media.

“Reporters are usually only talking about issues that affect their generation,” Khan said.

Khan said he also enjoyed learning writing techniques that appeal to his generation and how to use his age to his advantage.

Y Vote 2000 co-Director Ellen Shearer said journalists should concern themselves with making sure Generation Y keeps up with politics because both a democracy and newspapers demand it.

“There is the idea of college students being ignored,” Shearer said. “How do we make them feel that they have a stake in all of it?”