A recent UMass Daily Collegian piece pointed out to students that one-third of Amherst's Town Meeting seats will be up for grabs in March, an especially important fact in light of the severe underrepresentation of student-age (18-24) Amherst residents. The piece says that group makes up more than 50 percent of the town, but points to a startling number of Town Meeting representatives of that age: one (Dan Melick).
Town Meetings can, nonetheless, affect students in tangible ways. "As a result of a 2009 Town Meeting," the Collegian reported, "more than four unrelated persons were banned from living together under the same roof, which some saw as unfairly targeting students."
Terry Franklin, cannabis reform activist and organizer of the annual Extravaganja on the Amherst town common, has long been interested in getting students more involved in local politics, an apparently frustrating exercise.
"I've been trying to get students involved for a long while," says Franklin. "Over the years there's been very small participation. People at that age—politics isn't that big a thing for them, at least not local politics. It does affect them, but they don't make the connection. They will get upset, but they won't plan the long process of becoming a candidate, running, and fighting the issue in town meeting."
Franklin is himself a member of Town Meeting, and advocates for student causes: "If any of these student issues come up, I vote for them."
It looks as if Franklin and Melick are unlikely to have much student company soon. The Amherst Town Clerk's office reports that no candidates with UMass campus addresses filed to run in March.
