The Louisiana State Legislature just started its 2023 regular session a couple of weeks ago. If you follow local news, you obviously know this already, but many young adults have no idea, and if they do, they really don’t care.
As a result, they miss out on being able to help create change. For these youth, politics is just a game where they aren’t the players.
The youth’s cynical view of government and politics says that voters are just the pawns that parties, politicians and special interests move around in their attempts to maintain power and accumulate wealth. But unlike chess pieces, voters do not have to go where the politician-players move them; they can reach their own verdicts.
Citizens who have this view often abstain from civic engagement, reasoning that since their voice and vote have no power, they might as well not even waste the time.
Political scientists call that general apathy toward government a low “political efficacy.”
A common indicator to the health of democracy, political efficacy is simply the degree to which citizens think they have an ability to affect change in government and society through political involvement. Those with a high political efficacy think that their voice and vote have real impacts, and they are often inspired to take action as a result. These are obviously not the typical American voter or youth.
In a 2022 Pew Research poll, 71% of American respondents said that “people like them” have little to no influence on politics. Similarly, in a 2022 Harvard Institute of Politics survey, 36% of American young people believed “political involvement rarely has any tangible results” and 56% believed “politics today are no longer able to meet the challenges our country is facing.”
Of course, this is a rather pessimistic perspective of government and politics, but you don’t need to be an optimist to see its flaws. 
Even if politicians were all greedy self-absorbed villains (not all of them are), their power would still be dependent on the voter. The apathetic citizen often believes that politicians and special interests are manipulating them to cling to political, economic, and social power. That would mean that they know you have to be manipulated. Active citizens can use that to their advantage, while passive ones just let it happen. Nothing changes if the people allow nothing to change. It does not have to be that way.
So, what now? Well, look again to the legislative session. This is a perfect opportunity for young people – at LSU especially – to raise their voices and become more civically engaged. There are hundreds of bills whose passage or failure may very well depend on public support or opposition.
Your voice has an impact. Educate yourself and your acquaintances on these bills. Talk about them with your friends and family, and maybe even offer public comment at committee meetings. 
That is exactly what many young Louisianians did on April 26, when they came en masse to witness and speak against several GOP-backed bills regarding LGBTQ issues in schools. Those bills passed through the House Education committee – you can express your approval if you support them, and you can still speak up if you oppose them.
Beyond this session, the open primary for the State Legislature and statewide offices is this October and the runoffs will be this November. Elections for local offices happen all the time. 
It is all within your right and your power to engage with the politics of our state.
Matthew Pellittieri is a 19-year-old history and political science freshman from Ponchatoula.