When Southern Methodist University student Warren Seay Jr. applied for a Truman Scholarship, he wrote the judges about his deep concerns about public education and included troubling data about his high school in the Dallas suburb of DeSoto.
After Seay submitted his Truman application, he learned of a pending vacancy on the DeSoto school board due to a trustee retiring.
Not only did he run, Seay, a senior majoring in political science and public policy, handily defeated two teachers old enough to be his parents. At age 20, he now holds elected office.
“We ran a very focused campaign. I’m honored to have the opportunity,” says Seay, who’s spending the summer in a leadership program aimed at Black male college students. The program, known as the Institute for Responsible Citizenship (IRC), is unrelated to his election.
Seay is among a growing number of minority college students involved in politics and civic engagement, on- and off-campus. While it’s easy to assume that President Barack Obama’s historic tenure has inspired many young people of color, scholars say that the reasons run far deeper.
Both major political parties explicitly targeted the youth vote in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. That, in turn, has made young people more socially aware, experts say. And Seay says that his pubescent affinity for history and government became further stoked by the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks as he wondered, at age 13, what could have led to such unthinkable events?
Dr. Pei-te Lien, a University of California, Santa Barbara political science professor, says young U.S. minorities also are spurred into activism by anti-immigrant sentiment, despite many of them being U.S.-born and even lacking immediate family who are foreign-born.
