Plattsburgh State welcomes a new club to campus: Young Democratic Socialists of America. This club plans to hold political discussions and welcomes all PSUC students to participate. Club president, Gwen Sagliocca, explains the reasoning behind starting this new club.
“Last year we weren’t doing much besides having lectures, I thought that we should create a club to start remobilizing ourselves,” Sagliocca said.
Sagliocca explains what members of this organization will bring to the campus.
“We want to revitalize the student political action,” Sagliocca said. “We want to have events, not guest speakers, events where we go out and put our political knowledge to use. I feel like this campus is very anti-political and we don’t really like to name the problem, which is white supremacists and capitalism. I feel like naming the problem will immensely benefit the campus.”
Sagliocca said that before the club was officially recognized, they would attend events, such as Plattsburgh Pride, and spread their political knowledge.
Sagliocca’s friends were behind this idea and decided to be a part of the club’s board in order to bring about political change on campus. One member, gender and women’s major, Christina Stile, has taken the role of vice president.
“I like what the club stands for,”Stile said. “We are activists that are actually doing something about problems instead of sitting in a meeting room and discussing it.”
Stile said how there will be future event held by the YDSAP bringing attention to all topics, not just political issues, such as transgender equality.
Students who are not necessarily political or who might disagree with the democratic party should not be shy about attending a meeting.
“As long as their views are not based on oppressing individuals, everyone from any party is welcome,” Stile said. “ If they are open-minded, they could join.”
YDSAP Secretary, Roxy Jacone speaks about how the club idea bagan while donating cans with her friend Gwen Sagliocca.
“We would collect food cans and donate them to charities,”Jacone said. “Then we started thinking about starting a group who goes out and tries to bring change. I think this is the type of enthusiasm that all clubs need.”
YDSAP does not have a definite number of official members, but they do have meetings every Sunday where about twenty students attend to participate in political discussion.
Sagliocca’s club has received support thus far. However, they have received just as much of negativity. In a recent Facebook post that read: “ Trump is a symptom. Capitalism is a disease. Socialism is the cure.” This attracted various individuals to comment opposing views of socialism.
“I still think the post brought a lot of energy and made students think about issues in our society,” Sagliocca said.
YDSAP meets every Sunday at 8 p.m. in Meeting Room Four. All students are welcome to discuss and take action about issues around campus and in our society.
Email Mataeo Smith at news@cardinalpointsonline.com
