Students write postcards to US Congress
Students from Delta Phi Epsilon, USC’s professional foreign service and international relations fraternity, lined one side of Trousdale Parkway with postcards on Wednesday, while Trojan Advocates for Political Progress helped students make phone calls on the other side.
Delta Phi Epsilon and TAPP hosted an event Wednesday called “Postcards for Representatives,” which encouraged students to contact their representatives regarding political issues.
Sloane Martin, a freshman majoring in international relations and a new member of Delta Phi Epsilon, said that the event gives a unique opportunity to those who believe their voices have been silenced after the election.
“In this current political state, a lot of people feel like their voices have been silenced,” Martin said. “It’s really important to give people a platform for them to express how they feel … [and] to remind people that they do have a voice and they do have a say.”
Alex Bosch, a freshman majoring in international relations and global economy and a new member of Delta Phi Epsilon, said that because many students’ feelings about the current political climate vary, they chose to leave the postcards blank and allow students to write what they wish.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is provide an outlet to get [out] anger, frustration or appreciation for a senator,” Bosch said. “We’re providing free postcards and free postage — write one and we’ll mail it out for you. It’s just another way to get your voice heard past Twitter and Facebook because as we’ve seen, those sources are only so efficient, and so there’s something about a handwritten letter that has even more of an impact.”
Alec Vandenberg, a freshman studying public policy who is also the founder of TAPP and a writer for the Daily Trojan, said that the event comes off the heels of a similar event that the club hosted during the anti-Muslim ban rally at Tommy Trojan on Feb. 3.
“We were able to distribute 300 leaflets talking about how to contact Congress, so we wanted to do something similar,” Vandenberg said. “Some new issues have come up since last time we did it, so today we are focusing on healthcare and making sure Obamacare isn’t pulled away too quickly and that people are still covered. We’re focusing on different issues such as climate change in regards to keeping America in the Paris Climate Agreement, making sure we maintain investments in sustainable energy and renewable resources and things of that nature.”
Vandenberg said he encourages everyone to use their voice to call their representatives.
“Everyone call Congress. It’s really important to have your voice heard, it’s really easy, it only takes a few minutes and civic engagement continues despite the results of the election,” Vandenberg said. “We as students have power, and we have a voice.”
Delta Phi Epsilon Philanthropy Director Sheriden Smith, a junior studying international relations and Central European studies, said that the fraternity spearheaded the event to spread awareness about political activism.
“Since we are a nonpartisan organization and we have no political preference of any kind, this is just a medium in which students can get their voice to be heard because in this political climate we see a lot of people who aren’t exactly liberal, who aren’t exactly conservative, and we see a lot of those people in the middle who don’t know how to express their political feelings,” Smith said.
Smith added that they were actually inspired by a similar errors put on by the Women’s March in Los Angeles.
“They had a similar campaign to this where it was postcards that you can send to senators,” Smith said. “But our biggest worry with that was that the Women’s March is associated with a left movement and a liberal movement when we are very neutral. So something we wanted to do is provide a blank slate for people to just write how they feel and have the resource to look up their representative and find a way to get in contact with them.”
Smith said that the main purpose of Delta Phi Epsilon, which was brought back last semester after a 40-year hiatus, is to serve as a resource especially to students of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
“We restarted the organization in order to have a group of people to talk about what’s going on in our political climate in a professional, organized way and also to develop skills for the workplace,” Smith said. “We hold a lot of events for Dornsife students, specifically those who are interested in international relations, journalism, political science, economics and business. We hold organizational events that are in regards to professional development and talk about what’s going on in political climates at home and abroad.”