Dialogue: Apathy in young and a sense of powerlessness

At the University of Princeton in New Jersey, one of the four oldest and among the wealthiest and most prominent in the United States, a traditional week's holiday is given to students immediately before a presidential election so they can do their own campaigning before voting.

But whereas once the week had vigorous debating and protesting between campus Republicans and Democrats, very few students even bother to take part any more, and many won't even vote.

Positions for setting up physical barriers around the campus to control mass student protests during more politically tumultuous years have fallen into disuse.

Reasons offered for this apathy - considered typical of students throughout the major American universities - include that most are the children of the middle and upper socio-economic classes, complacently content after a decade of prosperity.

Although Princeton, along with the other Ivy League universities, has a generous scholarship scheme taken up by a large proportion of its many gifted students, other costs and student loans still leave the passage through the schools financially onerous. Some claim that the ever-increasing, exorbitant fees charged by American lawyers, doctors and other professionals are the result of a need to repay student loans of up to $US200,000 ($500,000).

One old Princetonian told me during a visit that the GI Bill after the Second World War, and similar legislation after Vietnam, had been great levellers. Youngsters who had either rejected university as an option or who had been unable to afford attendance had a chance to change their minds and were given a free ride to degrees. This lifted many up from well down the socio-economic ladder and gave a richer mix in academia and the professions.

I once met a black lawyer in Nashville who told me that the patriotism and heroic tenacity of the Viet Cong during his first action in Vietnam convinced him the whole adventure was a terrible mistake; but because of the war he wanted to make something of his life, and gained entry to Harvard Law School, something he could not otherwise have done.

As soon as he became a partner in a law firm he committed his private time to helping black children trapped in crime-ridden housing developments. His generation was powerfully politically committed.

Another reason offered for apathy is a sense of powerlessness, a belief that politicians don't listen to the young, that money and professional persuaders dominate election campaigns and that the country is always run by an establishment and nothing they can do will affect that.

Whatever the cause, the sense that politics is irrelevant to the young seems to be confirmed by an MTV (music network) poll that says a quarter of Americans between 18 and 24 cannot name both presidential candidates, and that only one-third of those polled would vote, compared with just over half in the last election. More than 70 per cent could not name the vice-presidential candidates and only 30 per cent said politics was of any interest to them.

My own view is that young people are responding to the surreal condition of contemporary politics. The right has a misplaced arrogance that it has appropriated and defined truth and is impatient with those who resist it, just as communists did 30 years ago. The left is confused and angry as it tries to make sense out of the intellectual rubble of its own erstwhile certainties.

And in an age of absurd accretions of wealth by individuals, business leaders with their cynicism and hubris believe simply that the standard measurement of personal worth and morality is money.

So most young people - and many not so young - who understand that these pretended philosophies are simply conceits, have turned their backs on politics and drifted into caring only for themselves and their own satisfactions; or, at best, only for themselves and their immediate families.

As the configuration of newspapers and shopping malls shows, their preoccupations are pop music, sport, food and the airs and graces of the famous - with politics a boring sideshow, occasionally amusing for scandals drummed up by TV and tabloids.

By the way, the Princeton campus was beautiful even in the cool of autumn as the leaves turned red and yellow and most shades in between, waiting to be stripped away by the sharp November winds. I was astonished to find that the student body is deliberately kept small, about one-quarter the size of the University of Auckland.

During lunch in the faculty dining-room, my host hastened over to chat for a minute or two with the famous Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who teaches there. When he returned, I said, "A Muldoon was a New Zealand Prime Minister not very long ago, and whenever a New Zealander hears the name he never greets it impassively, either smiles or frowns. And what's more, I'll bet Paul Muldoon has heard of him."

As we left the dining-room, I was ushered over to meet the poet and before I left I said: "Did you know a Muldoon was a New Zealand prime minister?"

He grinned and said: "Ah, Piggy. Yes, he's world famous, you know, at least among the Muldoons."