This year’s general election may be one of the most important days of the year for our country. Voters will decide which presidential candidate, and by extension political party, will lead the country for the next four years—a decision which could change many aspects of our lives as students. However, the race that has arguably greater importance for our representation is the election for Congress. Each state is divided into districts based on population size, and each district votes for a representative that will advocate for their opinions in the nation’s capital. Evansville is in Indiana’s eighth congressional district and has three nominees for the position: Republican Mark Messmer, Libertarian K. Richard Fitzlaff, and Democrat Erik Hurt. The candidate that receives a majority of votes will act as the voice for over 700,000 people in the district.
Erik Hurt is the Democrat on the ticket this year. He began his college career studying political science at UE then transitioning to history at Indiana University where he grew an interest in the field—he is an Evansville alumnus. After moving to Florida for a few years to take a less active role in politics, he viewed the government’s response to the COVID pandemic and the Trump presidency as calls to action. He and his wife moved back to Evansville so that he could pursue a political position, and in May of this year he won the Democrat primary and was named the party’s candidate.
On September 17, I had the opportunity to sit down with Hurt to discuss his positions on government spending, student welfare, and equal representation. Hurt appeared well-spoken, informed, and passionate about his stances:
What issues have you seen that have prompted your desire to promote economic equity?
“If you look at Indiana in terms of wage growth, we are near the bottom in the country, and we’re 47th out of 50 in terms of actual wage growth. When you look at the way our system is structured, it doesn’t favor increasing those wages for working class people… and back in the 60s and 70s, the average CEO made 15 times what the average worker at their company made where now it’s about three to four hundred times. We’re seeing that not just in Indiana, not just in Florida, it’s a national thing. If we want to invest in our people and making sure that they have the best opportunities, we have to rewrite these tax codes.”
How do you plan to protect the students of the future from destructive debt?
“What we did before where college was much more affordable, where you could work your way through school, it was big federal investment into public universities. That obviously looks different for a private university like UE, but when you are having that kind of cheaper public option, it can force private universities hands to lower their tuition as well. (…) We need to make sure that the tuition costs reflect what people are actually making (…) and I believe we should remove the interest on federal student loans. We have to treat that as an investment into our students. That’s what we should say about putting money into our public schools and into our institutions: it’s not a cost, it is an investment.”
What specific measures will you support that assist marginalized communities in higher education?
“You have to look at the history of systemic racism and marginalization in this country. When you look back at those investments in the 40s and 50s, one of the most significant investments we made in this country was the GI bill, which, after World War II, all these soldiers had the opportunity to get very cheap loans and education. They were able to get homes, they were able to get educations, they were able to get jobs, and they were able to build generational wealth. Those benefits were denied to people of color, and those groups were not able to benefit from those programs, and we’re still feeling those ramifications (…) whether it was redlining in African American communities, aggressive policing towards people of different ethnicities— (…) you have to take it into consideration. (…) There was a big pull in the Ivy League to restructure qualifications and those affirmative action standards and requirements (…) and we need to make sure that those guardrails are in place to protect marginalized people and to get them into places that they’ve been historically denied.”
What is Senate Bill 202, and why should it worry college students?
“[The bill] essentially creates an environment where teachers and students are limited to what they can talk about and how they can talk about it, particularly professors. If they are believed to show a political bias they can be reported on and retaliated against, and, even if they’re tenured, can lose their position and lose their job. This has been directly targeted towards more left-wing leaning ideologies. It can be something like talking about climate change in a science class. It could be talking about Native American genocide in the United States. It could be a piece of literature that deals with certain themes whether it’s oppression, marginalization, or LGBTQ themes. Professors can find themselves in a position where they may not be able to talk about this or teach about this as effectively or thoroughly as they should. We have to make sure that universities are places where difficult subject matter is being navigated, because if we’re not exploring difficult themes and difficult subjects, what are we doing?”
What would you tell students who say their votes don’t matter?
“It can be tough because if you feel like you’re not being spoken to, if you feel like it’s no different either way, then what is the reason to get out there and vote? I understand the frustration with the options, with the process, but what’s incredibly important for students to recognize is the amount of influence they can have on elections, whether it’s at the federal or the local level. What I say down here in Evansville, particularly for something local, is that [the current mayor] won her mayoral election with less than 9,000, and that is less than the student population of USI, let alone UE and Ivy Tech. Let alone the high schoolers who are 18 and can vote, let alone the people who aren’t in school who are that age. There’s an enormous amount of influence that you can have if you’re willing to engage and to activate (…) I think there are a lot of people in those positions of power who are banking on your disinterest and your disenfranchisement and your apathy, and if you’re willing to get engaged, you can overcome that, and you can overcome those individuals and put different people in power, and reshape the way your community looks and is organized.”
Erik Hurt is a passionate and knowledgeable candidate who began his journey at the University of Evansville—he’s now back in his home town with a vision for the future of Indiana. Whether you agree with his positions or not, voting as students in this election is imperative. We must make our voices heard and have representation in government in every way we can. The general election takes place on Tuesday, November fifth, and I strongly implore the students of UE to be there at the polls.
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