Editor, Ceres Courier,

While I totally agree with you that more teenagers need to be involved with the political process, there are a good amount that are active in both state and federal politics. Many of the interns at Congressman Denham and Michael Eggman's campaign were local high school students.

I'm 16 years old and I am able to talk to my fellow teenagers regarding their political views fairly often. A large amount of teenagers are pretty up to date on the politics of our nation and state.

The fact of the matter, however, is many teenagers have no reason to be involved in politics. Time after time, our voices have been ignored by those in power.

Recent example? The University of California Regents ignored the protests of students across the system against an increase in tuition that could amount to 28 percent by 2019. While Gov. Brown opposed the tuition increases, along with other senior state officials, it's still a lesson to students that regents who are appointed by our governor and confirmed by our state senators, will actively ignore the people that they were supposed to serve - the current and future students of the University of California system.

In addition, Proposition 30 was just passed two years ago. It was supposed to be the savior of the system yet the UC system is here in 2014 raising tuition for students. While I'm not going to argue that Prop. 30 was bad - it saved many school districts - students who voted for it were not given the full truth. If it was supposed to be just for primary education, they should have told the people that.

Another example of recent youth involvement would be the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests. Teenagers across the country protested in the streets or through social media. It was controversial with many adults mocking the protests or the fact that some college students got their finals delayed so they could participate.

Personally, I don't support everything regarding the Brown and Garner protests but I am not going to make fun of my fellow youth being involved in protests. It's hypocritical for adults to want youth to be involved but then chastised them when they get involved.

Regarding your observations at Blaker Kinser, the fact that middle school students don't know the difference between a state senator or a U.S senator is not unique to them; many adults probably don't know either. They have a perfectly good excuse: they're still students in middle school who are still in basic history classes. I'd visit one of the AP Goverment or AP US History classes at Ceres High or Central Valley before you say that young people aren't involved in politics.

Nikolas Mitchell,
Ceres

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