Senior Mihika Manocha wanted her voice to be heard. She was terrified of the political changes in Texas and wanted to send a message to the people. So she decided to email every single publisher in Texas, hoping they would pick up an article she wrote.
Eventually on Aug. 20, the Texas Observer published Manocha’s opinion article about the current Texas policies and school board elections. The goal of the article was to spread awareness and encourage people to vote in the Nov. 4 election.
“I think the biggest threat to democracy right now is indifference,” Manocha said. “And I think political advocacy has been on the decline for the past decade.”
She also said freedom of speech is getting very narrow and the reason for the decline in political advocacy is because public trust in the government has eroded.
“I think the school board is one of the first steps in bringing that trust back,” Manocha said. “I recommend everybody to research the candidates who are running in the school board elections.”
The article covers topics such as textbook bans and removing librarians on campus. However, Manocha feels as if a lot of people don’t see how these policies are affecting them, or they don’t see the need to speak out.
“People don’t really think that their voice will have any show in the government,” Manocha said. “They don’t really think their legislators or anybody will listen to them, which is why people need to start voting again.”
Manocha has noticed that a lot of people in her class, including herself, have said they plan on leaving Texas whenever they go to college. This observation inspired Manocha to write her article.
“A lot of people have thoughts on the policies in CFISD,” Manocha said. “I really wanted to be a voice for the people who didn’t really have one.”
Originally in the story, Manocha included information about her political campaign, which is campaigning three of the candidates in the election. However, she didn’t think any publisher would want to associate themselves with a specific candidate, so a lot of information surrounding that was cut out at the end.
“I really wanted to get it published,” she said. “There was this place called Medium where you can self-publish things, but I think it would have been stronger if I got it into an actual newspaper in Texas.”
After submitting the article, Manocha’s debate coach questioned why she didn’t use a pen name considering the state of freedom of speech today.
“Right now in current news, I feel like they’re really blindsiding people and trying to censor certain things,” Manocha said. “I was very scared of publishing the article and doing things like this.”
However, despite all of this, Manocha thinks it’s important for people to protect their freedom of speech and first amendment rights.
“All of this stems from me really loving the school and the district,” Manocha said. “I want to be a voice for the people rather than conform to the impression of the status quo right now.”
