Opening the Q&A to the 125+ students at the FYI Film Your Issue panel at George Washington University by soliciting their feedback on their generation’s engagement or apathy, a student rose and proclaimed angrily and vehemently how much he “hates” the way the media portrays his generation as apathetic.

The common refrain of students at the campus events is resentment at being compared unfavorably to their parents, the baby boomers, in terms of engagement.

“We’re just as interested, we care just as much, we do just as much,” is the rallying cry. The message is that in today’s fractured media, the young adults see their own actions as viable as the large, massive protests that were reported a generation ago.

“We do things in smaller ways,” said one student, while another pointed out that everyone she knows “volunteers their time.”

Another student articulated a broad-based cynicism or mistrust that personal action makes much of a difference, pointing to the fact that despite the opposition to the War in Iraq, the government was still planning to send more troops.

Clay Warren, Chauncey M. Depew Professor of Communication, Communications Program, George Washington University, which co-hosted the evening, countered that he “truly hopes the prevailing opinion among youth is NOT “Our means of making change don’t make change,” as stated by the student.

The on-stage panelists were Clay Warren; Mary McClelland, Field Director, Young Voter Strategies; Mark Jenkins, contributor, NPR All Things Considered, The Washington Post; Mary Beth Marklein, Education Reporter, USA TODAY; and FYI president HeathCliff Rothman, who moderated the panel.

Mary Beth Marklein quoted from a study that indicated that voting, a form of activism, had indeed risen in the last election for young adults.

The theme of the panel was “Expressing Your Issue in the Digital Age,” a free, dynamic look at contemporary social activism in a new media landscape of the internet and technological advances which puts filmmaking easily into the hands of everyone.

After the hour-long discussion, students remained for Children of Men, donated by Universal Pictures.