The Nongovernmental Organization Freedom House maintains an index of countries around the world based on their level of freedom, with the countries segregated into categories of “free,” “partly free,” and “not free.” 60 percent of the people on this planet live under the rule of a nation in those last two categories. To put it another way, there is only a two in five chance that a person born today will be born in a free country. As citizens in one of the largest and most powerful democracies on earth, we are uniquely fortunate. What’s troubling is that although we have already beaten the odds just by being Americans, only 49 percent of under-30 adults turned out to vote in the last presidential election. Of all the freedoms we have, our generation seems reluctant to exercise the most important one: the freedom to choose who governs.

The apathy towards civic engagement shown by young people is puzzling because young people have their careers, their possible families, their whole futures, to worry about. This means they have greater incentive to vote than any long-term demographic, as long as they consider the long term. A young first-time voter could reasonably expect 60 or even 70 more years to live with the decisions that are made today. They will feel the burden of entitlement cuts. If a war is declared, they will be the ones to fight it. Newcomers to the job market will be hit hardest in a recession. Young people are overwhelmingly the ones buying their first house and paying off their student loans, which are heavily impacted by changes in interest rates made by the Federal Reserve. Disengagement on the part of young people in America is not just irresponsible, it’s a concession of power to those who will never suffer the long-term impacts of their decisions.

The sources of this disengagement are complex. But most importantly, voting is not mandatory in the United States, unlike in Australia, among other countries. Young people feel that in a country of 300 million people their vote hardly matters. They might feel that if they live in a “safe state” that voting is even less important. And in many places, voting is hard. There are numerous barriers, including requirements for photo ID and numerous forms that must be filled out in order to register to vote. And young people who have school or work on the first Tuesday of November might simply feel that it’s not worth taking the time to go vote.

Although they may be apathetic, young people are not stupid. They care deeply about the issues even if they don’t care about voting. Ask a young person if they would like to be conscripted, or if they would like higher interest rates on their student loans and this will become very clear. The important thing then is to connect the issues that young people care about to the importance of voting, researching the candidates and knowing how to vote. There is no easy formula for getting this done, but a student organization here at NYU is giving it a try. It’s called the NYU Votes Initiative and it’s the brainchild of myself and CAS junior Wenbo Wang. The initiative’s goal is to utilize the numerous student organizations here on campus and challenge them to register as many NYU students as possible.

The challenge of getting young people engaged is a bigger one than any organization can tackle, but NYU is a university with global reach. What we do here gets noticed everywhere. And that makes it a challenge worth taking on.

If you want to get involved with the NYU Votes Initiative, you can email founder Wenbo Wang at [email protected].