Though the White House seems far from Megan Peterson’s room in Sargent Hall, and though Washington, D.C., lies 600 miles from Genevieve Maricle’s Evanston apartment, policy decisions made in the nation’s capital by the next president could shape the two Northwestern students’ futures.

Like the rest of NU’s student body, Peterson and Maricle will join Generation Y today to cast their votes in the presidential election. And what they and millions of other Americans decide will shape the composition, focus and direction of the federal government. Their decisions could also have a direct impact on younger Americans.

Y Vote 2000, a project run from the Medill School of Journalism newsroom in Washington, conducted a survey of the issues Americans ages 18 to 24 care most about. Young people surveyed ranked their concerns in the following order, from highest priority to lowest: education, crime, school safety, Social Security reform and environmental protection.

EDUCATION: THE TOP PRIORITY

Among members of Generation Y surveyed, 81 percent ranked improving the nation’s education system as their top concern, said Ellen Shearer, director of Y Vote 2000.

“Because we’ve spent our whole lives being educated, it’s particularly salient,” Peterson said. “We’re paying a ton for our education.”

Because NU is a private school, most of its undergraduate funding does not come through federal sources, though many research grants to the university are federally funded.

Al Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said federal funds such as Stafford loans and Pell grants are the main government resources that affect students. Republican nominee George W. Bush’s platform includes about a $2,000 increase for the Pell grant.

“If there was no such thing as financial aid, I wouldn’t be going to any university anywhere,” said Weinberg sophomore Jessica Goethals. “Even with loans and work study, it would still be too expensive if federal financial aid didn’t exist.”

As part of his campaign, Vice President Al Gore has promised to make as much as $10,000 of college tuition tax deductible.

“As a student, I obviously think it’s a great idea,” Peterson said of the tax credit. “It also encourages people to return to college — adults who are hindered by the fact that they have to support their families.”

Bush said he would grant tax exemption to state and independent prepaid tuition plans, which allow students to lock down college tuition costs at lower prices.

But Kristy Ringor, communications director for the United States Students Organization, a group that represents students in Washington, worries that tax credits in general will benefit only the upper-middle class.

“(Tax credits) aren’t helping a greater number of students go to college,” she said.

But issues other than higher education affect Peterson and other students.

Peterson, who is completing her practicum at Chiaravalle Montessori School in Evanston, just submitted her application to Teach for America. The partially government-funded program, run by AmeriCorps, encourages recent college graduates to teach in under-resourced urban and rural schools.

If accepted, Peterson, a psychological services and women’s studies major, would teach for two years in the types of schools the presidential candidates are targeting.

“Education policy will continue affecting me in a way it won’t affect most students,” Peterson said.

Both major presidential candidates also want to address national disparities in school achievement. To do so, both want to implement some form of testing.

Gore wants states to administer a national standardized test; Bush favors instituting state standards to measure the progress of schools.

The candidates also differ on what to do with the results. Bush wants to increase funding to schools that do well. At the schools that don’t fare so well, Bush wants to give parents vouchers so they can choose to send their kids to private schools.

Although Gore also wants to reward schools that perform well, he favors closing schools that perform poorly and reopening them under new administration.

He also opposes vouchers.

Asha Dhanarajan, president of Teach for America Northwestern, which tutors kids at Evanston’s Dewey Elementary School, said the voucher debate brings national attention to America’s public schools.

“With vouchers, so many think there’s potential problems, but the idea is a step in the right direction,” she said. “It brings a lot into the open about public schools.”

PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT

Genevieve Maricle isn’t content to just sit and read about a United Nations conference on whether to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty in which countries pledged to reduce carbon dioxide and other energy emissions.

Maricle, president of Students for Ecological and Environmental Development, isn’t even content to push a comparable bill through the Associated Student Government.

The bill calls for NU to conform to the Kyoto protocol guidelines. To do so, administrators would have to pledge to reduce energy emissions by 7 percent by the 2007, Maricle said. Harvard, Oberlin and Tufts universities already have said they would follow the guidelines.

Instead of watching from NU, Maricle and five friends actually will trek to the Netherlands Nov. 17 for the Greenpeace- and Ozone Action-sponsored UN conference on global climate change.

Maricle will join 194 students and Gore and hundreds of other dignitaries who are slated to be there.

“Our main goal is to represent the student voice,” Maricle said. “We are going to be stressing to the (U.S.) administration that they vote for our interests.”

The presidential candidates don’t agree on the Kyoto Protocol, which Gore helped write.

Though SEED does not officially endorse a candidate, most of its members agree Bush is “unequivocally worse” than Gore when it comes to environmental policies, Maricle said.

Though Bush opposes the treaty, Maricle also said she was “surprised at the lack of environmental issues” that Gore has featured in his campaign. Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan also opposes the Kyoto Protocol, while Green Party candidate Ralph Nader supports aggressive cuts in emissions.

Compared with the rest of the American public, Generation Y tends to place more emphasis on protecting the environment, said Shearer of Y Vote 2000.

“It has a big role in the youth generation,” Maricle said. “We finally know the effects of different choices that we as a country make.

“People know that there are threats to our environment,” she said. “They’re undeniably going to happen, so it’s time to care about them. We’re the generation that’s going to feel it.”

ENSURING CAMPUS SAFETY

Because most of NU’s safety services — University Police and the Escort Service — are operated through the university, the federal government plays at most a minimal role in campus safety.

But UP must comply with federal standards such as the Campus Crime Statistics Act. Amendments made a few weeks ago to the act require universities to report crime statistics to the Department of Education. UP has posted the statistics on its Web site (www.northwestern.edu/up), which shows 10 crimes committed against persons and 205 property crimes committed on and around the Evanston campus in 1999.

“Generally, students feel safe on campus,” said Asst. Chief Daniel McAleer of UP. “If they weren’t, they would tell us day in and day out.”

UP only works with the federal government during investigations or when dignitaries come to campus. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was slated to give NU’s commencement speech in 1999, UP worked with Secret Service agents from the State Department, McAleer said.

“We need them on a case-by-case basis,” McAleer said of the federal government. “We always work well together.”

SECURING OUR FUTURE

First created in 1935 during the New Deal era, Social Security was designed to provide senior citizens with retirement income. Twelve percent of a worker’s payroll — 6 percent paid by the employer and
another 6 percent from the worker — goes into Social Security, said Jay Mueller, an economist with Strong Investments in Milwaukee.

But as more Baby Boomers retire, the burden of paying for Social Security will fall on Generation Y, he said.

“If I were in Generation Y, I would be most concerned that Social Security could change at any time under anybody’s political program,” said Mueller, noting Bush wants to partially privatize Social Security while Gore is focusing on retirement savings plan accounts.

The way it looks now, Americans’ payroll taxes won’t be able to support Social Security after 2012. The result: the depletion of the entire Social Security Trust Fund by 2032, according to Voter.com, a nonpartisan online polling group. If that’s the case, members of Generation Y will never see a return on their Social Security payments once they retire.

“There’s lots of things to be concerned about,” Mueller said. “There’s a fundamental demographic problem. The worker-to-retiree ratio is going in the wrong direction.”

When Social Security was created, the number of workers to retirees was 40 to one, Mueller said. Now it’s three to one, making it harder to keep Social Security solvent, he said.

And because retirees are living longer than those of the 1930s and ’40s, there’s a more intense drain on Social Security, Mueller said.

“The first step is to understand the problem and re-evaluate the potential solutions,” Mueller said. “We have to consider ways to make a better design for Social Security.

“In the 1930s, the world was a different place,” he said. “I expect if the world can change that much, there’s an awful lot of time for Social Security to change, too.”

A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH

All the major presidential candidates support the death penalty except for Nader, who has argued that the death penalty doesn’t deter homicides and has been used to discriminate against “the poor and the defenseless.”

Since 1995, Bush, the governor of Texas, has overseen more than 140 executions in Texas.

“I think if (the death penalty) is administered fairly, justly and swiftly, it saves lives,” said Bush during the third televised presidential debate held at Washington University in Saint Louis. “You can’t let public persuasion sway you because the job is to enforce the law. And that’s what I did.”

While stressing that DNA testing should be used in all capital punishment cases, Gore also showed support for the death penalty.

“There has to be an alertness to say, ‘Wait a minute, have we got the wrong guy?'” Gore said during the St. Louis debate. “But I support the death penalty in the most heinous cases.”

The debate over the death penalty gained national momentum after Gov. George Ryan enacted a moratorium last January on capital punishment in Illinois. Before the moratorium, an investigation by Medill Prof. David Protess and his class of NU students helped free Anthony Porter from death row.

With the issue being scrutinized in Illinois and across the country, the new administration could reconsider the fairness of the death penalty. Such changes could directly influence Protess’ work and that of the journalism students who take his class.

While most Americans favor the death penalty, the debate could become more heated as Generation Y grows older.

“Generation Y has more ethical qualms,” said Weinberg senior Chad Bell, a political science major who is doing his thesis on Generation Y and voting. “They want to see reform.”