Maddie Kuntz

Junior Maddie Kuntz wanted to become a better public speaker her freshman year, prompting her to join the Model United Nations (MUN) club.

“It kind of opened me up to [the political] world and then from there, after that year, I joined debate and took [macroeconomics], and so that just kind of furthered my interest to dive into politics more,” stated Kuntz.

After taking macroeconomics, Kuntz became inspired to pursue the economics of politics and is interested in the way money is connected to a successful government.

Kuntz’s current role models are Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Congressman Brad Schneider, whom she has met on multiple occasions. “He does a lot of town meetings in Libertyville, you just don’t really hear about it a lot, so I kind of went digging for it. Towards the end of my freshman year, he met with Debate, Advocats and MUN, and he had a public speaking thing and we asked him questions,” Kuntz explained. Kuntz also said she runs into Congressman Schneider at Hansa Coffee Roasters regularly and is on his email list.

“I always think it’s important to get involved in politics in some way, even if it’s just educating yourself with how [politics] works, not necessarily taking a specific side or anything like that. I think it’s just important to be aware,” said Kuntz. She explained how, no matter how small, politics affects everyone in some way, thus the importance of understanding our government’s function and role.

Kuntz started following politics in our country closely during the 2016 election.

“That was freshman year. Before that, I didn’t really follow politics as much because that’s just when I felt like I understood a lot more and really saw the impact of everything. I think that was a defining moment of my freshman year,” expressed Kuntz.

“It’s just always when elections come around, no matter their size, there’s always a little peak in people’s interest, but I feel like that’s kind of dangerous because when you choose when you want to be interested in [politics], you’re not committing to your opinion or anything and you’re only [interested] when it’s convenient,” Kuntz said, adding that deciding when to talk about politics doesn’t help our leaders make effective decisions and makes it difficult for change to occur.

To stay in the loop, Kuntz subscribes to emails from multiple news sources who all have different perspectives in order to be exposed to all possible opinions on current issues.

“Every news source has bias, but within the bias there [are] hard facts; it’s just you have to learn how to read bias and how to pick apart the facts within it. Bias has such a bad connotation with it, but everything has [bias], and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just acknowledging it and learning that you can read around it. Even if [news] does have bias, there are some things in it that have obvious cold, hard facts,” explained Kuntz.

“I try not to align too much with a certain political party on everything because I feel like that’s really polarizing,” Kuntz stated, going on to explain that when Americans feel forced to pick a side, it becomes harder for compromise in government to occur. She feels that this is a dangerous political method and encourages others to stay away from this way of thinking.