According to the 2024 State of the Academy (SOTA), 37.3 percent of students get the majority of their news from the “New York Times” while 22.6 percent look to social media. Additionally, the data revealed that nearly 50 percent of students felt moderately informed, while a third of students felt slightly or not at all informed. With the upcoming presidential election, The Phillipian examined the different ways in which students stay educated on political issues.
As a hub for information and resources on campus, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL) offers various resources that can help students acquire information, including the OWHL catalog and the librarians themselves. According to Derek Curtis, Programming and Digital Content Producer at the OWHL, students have free digital subscriptions to “The New York Times,” “Financial Times,” “The Chronicle of Higher Education,” and “The Economist.” Deputy Head of School Merrilee Mardon expanded on how students should value the resources the OWHL provides to them daily, in addition to special events.
“We want students to be curious about politics and to have ways to explore their questions. And we have phenomenal resources in the OWHL – the newspaper subscriptions are an excellent and easy to access way to stay on top of world events from a range of perspectives. And our librarians themselves are excellent resources, as are the [library] guides they have developed. What I am trying to say is that we are a school that is designed to help students learn — extra programming is great, but I hope we don’t lose sight of the extraordinary resources we have every day,” wrote Mardon in an email to The Phillipian.
This fall, the Dean of Studies Office organized the Presidential Election Speaker Series to address a range of issues relevant to the election, some of which were offered as optional learning opportunities. Sophie Holten ’25 noted how, though the school provides ample opportunities for discourse, the responsibility lies within students to educate themselves in a bipartisan way.
“The school provides a lot of opportunities to speak to adults on campus about certain opinions and ideas that are circulating in society and politics in general, but I feel like, as students and citizens or just anyone in general, it’s up to you and your own personal responsibility to stay well informed. I say that [you do not need to] necessarily have your own opinion, but to look at both sides of the story, and in the case of the upcoming election, both parties and their opinions,” said Holten.
Similarly, Curtis acknowledged Andover students’ busy schedules but urged them to seek longer form news and be critical of information found on social media.
“Given how heavily scheduled Andover students are, one way of engaging in politics is to not use social media for quick hits of politics but to maybe give yourself a bit of time each day to read a newspaper or to engage in some longer form journalism in which you get a deeper understanding of a given topic or a deeper understanding of someone’s perspective on a given topic. A lot of politics is very meme-driven and very quick content-driven,” said Curtis.
According to SOTA data, 89.7 percent of students believe that Andover has a left-leaning tendency. Valentina Spilere ’26 reflected on the negative effects that a noticeable student body political leaning could have on open discourse. She elaborated that this leads to a lack of knowledge about other perspectives.
“I definitely have felt that most of the school is very left-centric, and that sometimes expressing opinions outside of that is very complex or very badly seen socially, even though it might just be an opinion or a question about something. If you don’t tend to lean on the left, you’re seen as a maybe not very proper person. As most of my friends are left-leaning, I am getting a lot of information about the things happening on the left-centric parties more than the right ones. I think it’s something that cannot be fixed; it’s a societal issue,” said Spilere.
Patrick Xu ’27, while aware of the library’s resources, wished that there was more consistent programming. He expressed hope for an active educational series throughout the school year, not just during moments of political importance.
“It’s great that [the school’s] doing some things leading up to the election, but for the most part, the news information only comes when it’s most critical, like last year with Israel-Palestine, they had a talk in the [Cochran] Chapel. For the most part, I wish they provided more information consistently… The library has in the past provided some forums and some discussions, but similar to the school as a whole, it would be nice to have more direct information given to us,” said Xu.
Mardon concluded, “Sometimes, we can be hard on ourselves as a community. I’m still new here, and I’m still learning. As I learn more about our curriculum and the more interactions I’ve had with our students, I feel confident in our students and in the skills our educational program emphasizes. We can always do better, and we’ll always try to do better, and I hope all members of our community can appreciate what a gift it is to live in this community where it is so easy to access information, attend an event with an interesting speaker, meet somebody with a different perspective.”
