At work: Hayley Colley, a recent college graduate, is waitressing at a restaurant in Franklin, Tenn., until she finds a job in her field. Young people are reportedly registering to vote in droves for the November election. She voted for the first time in August, to pick a Democrat to run for US Senate. (Mary Knox Merrill/Staff)
New voter: a young woman’s political awakening
Hayley Colley of Tennessee is among the Americans who, on Nov. 4, will cast votes in a US presidential election for the first time.
By Ariel Sabar | Staff writer/ October 14, 2008 edition
Mary Knox Merrill/Staff
Civic duty: Hayley Colley of Columbia, Tenn., registered to vote in June at a rock festival. ‘It might have been the hippie instinct in me,’ she says of her choice of venue.
Columbia, Tenn.
When Hayley Aurora Colley turned 18, registering to vote was nowhere on her to-do list. The sassy California girl with a spray of freckles sought only freedom five years ago when she left the Santa Barbara apartment she shared with her mom and brother.
Her first year at a Tennessee college was a blur of frat parties, jock boyfriends, and nights of such revelry that she slept through morning classes. She and her friends griped sometimes about President Bush, “but I wasn’t proactive” about it.
Then, in December, the real world hit her. She graduated with decent grades but few job prospects. Gasoline prices were draining her pay as a waitress. And she was concerned about the effects of the Iraq war on young veterans she’d met.
For the first time, Hayley saw links between her own life and the decisions of elected officials in Washington. This summer, after months of procrastination, she filled out a voter-registration form.
This presidential election year has seen a groundswell in first-time registrations and voting by young people, a group with notoriously little interest in electoral politics. An estimated 17 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 voted in a presidential primary or caucus this year, up from 9 percent in 2000, according to CIRCLE, a College Park, Md., group that tracks youth civic participation. All told, more than 6.5 million Americans under 30 voted in the nomination contests.
Polls suggest that much of the credit belongs to Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president whose passionate calls for change in Washington have roused an army of young volunteers.
Hayley supports Senator Obama but is no activist. She can’t parse policy positions, owns no campaign bumper stickers, and doesn’t blog. She registered to vote after Tennessee’s primary, with an eye to the November election. She applied not at the county elections office, but while waiting for Pearl Jam to take the stage at a Woodstock-style rock festival not far from here.
Still, in many ways the 23-year-old is typical of her generation – a young woman who might well have skipped another election, were it another place or another year.
* * *
Hayley grew up poor in a glittery city of seaside homes. Talk in the family’s one-bedroom rental was not about politics, but money. Her mother moved to Santa Barbara to be closer to children from a former marriage and soon found herself working two jobs.
Hayley let herself into an empty apartment after school, and ironed the waitressing uniform her mother would put on after a day job as an office secretary. While friends at San Marcos High School drove BMWs and shopped at Juicy Couture, she and her mom went to discount stores and Goodwill. Several days a week, Hayley waitressed alongside her mother for money for clothes and movies.
Hayley didn’t want for friends. She was a shooting guard on the girls’ varsity basketball team, and, with her social confidence and good looks, she was popular. But she kept a lot inside.
“I always felt that separation going into my friends’ houses,” she says. “It seemed like no one else was in my shoes – no one. I think it definitely affected me politically. Growing up the way we did pushed me toward the liberal side of things.”
In her AP American history class, Hayley was riveted by two books: “What’s So Great About America,” Dinesh D’Souza’s post-9/11 tribute to the United States, and “The Betrayal of America,” Vincent Bugliosi’s indictment of the “stolen” 2000 presidential election.
Her senior year, classmates elected her commissioner of communications for student government. But if these were the first stirrings of a political consciousness, they would have to wait.
* * *
On her own for the first time, at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Hayley went to so many frat parties that her grades tumbled. Her father was so disappointed he stopped paying tuition. She transferred first to a community college and then Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. She logged long hours on the quiet upper floors of the school library to raise her grades and straighten out her life.
Political talk among college friends amounted to tossed-off put-downs. Of Mr. Bush, she recalls, “We’d say, ‘He’s an idiot, I can’t even believe he’s running my country.’ ” But it never went beyond that.
“It just wasn’t on my mind,” she says. “Locally, I didn’t want to vote. Nationally, I knew we were screwed for another four years.”
Hayley won college internships with a local news station and a public relations firm, and graduated in December with a degree in electronic media journalism. She believed what people said while she was growing up: Get a college degree, and good jobs will follow.
She sent out dozens of résumés. But with the economy in turmoil, a glut of applicants, and few media companies hiring, she got few replies.
Dispirited, she moved in this spring with her grandparents in this Nashville suburb and took a job waiting tables at an Italian restaurant. She works four days a week for $2.13 an hour, plus tips. She fills her tank in such small increments that her car – a loaner from her father’s girlfriend – ran out of gas recently in the middle of Nashville.
“I can’t stand having a degree and not being able to use it – it’s killing me,” she said, still in her black restaurant clothes two hours after returning from a day shift. “I got through college and I’ve come out to a world that has nothing to offer.”
* * *
Hayley’s grandfather, Jerry Colley, a criminal defense lawyer here, had worked on the campaigns of Democratic Tennessee senators and governors for nearly a half century. His wife, Linda Colley, a hairdresser, has chaired the Maury County Democratic Party since 2000. Their home in a rural subdivision is decorated with photos of the couple with Gov. Phil Bredeson, former US Rep. Harold Ford Jr., and President Bill Clinton.
CNN is often on, and politics is a favorite subject at dinner. When Hayley was home, the Colleys, who first supported John Edwards and then Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, would try to interest Hayley in the presidential race. Mrs. Colley told Hayley she had a stack of voter-registration forms right there in the closet.
But their granddaughter, with her rebellious streak, put her grandparents off. And her boyfriend, Nick Haag, a long-sideburned guitarist in a local band, who had registered to vote when he was 18, didn’t intervene.
“To me, it’s a person’s choice,” says Mr. Haag, who is more conservative politically than his girlfriend. “She’d been in college having a good time, and it hadn’t been a big part of her life.”
Tennessee saw one of the nation’s sharpest spikes this year in turnout rates for young people, according to CIRCLE. Some 15 percent of Tennesseans under 30 voted in the presidential primary, a nearly fourfold increase over 2000, which saw a suspense-free primary easily won by favorite son Al Gore.
On the nights of almost every big primary, Hayley sat in front of the TV with her grandparents as the results rolled in. But she didn’t vote in Tennessee’s contest.
“We hounded her to register,” Mrs. Colley recalled. “But she’s very independent, so you have to go with Hayley at her speed.”
Still, one issue in the race sometimes got her to open up, particularly while Mrs. Colley pretended to be busy making dinner. “The economy would get her attention,” Mr. Colley recalls.
Though Hayley seldom discussed them with her grandparents, other issues were starting to gnaw at her as well. Iraq war veterans she had met – including a co-worker at the restaurant – seemed defeated by the experience, and she began to feel that Bush had started the war on the basis of “a lie.”
* * *
Bonnaroo is a rock festival that unfolds over four days each June on a farm in Manchester, Tenn., an 80-minute drive east of Columbia. When Hayley announced that she and Nick were going, her grandparents assumed the worst.
“I thought they’d be smoking marijuana and drinking beer,” Mr. Colley said.
Added Mrs. Colley: “We weren’t thinking voter registration – I’ll tell you that.”
On the third day, when Hayley’s favorite band, Pearl Jam, was set to play, the mercury pushed into the 80s, rain fell, and the humidity made the air feel like soup. Hayley had no sooner stretched out in the shade of a tree than she noticed a line at a nearby booth. The booth was run by HeadCount, a nonpartisan group that registers would-be voters at rock concerts.
The sight of so many young people lining up to register stirred something in her, and she joined them.
“I think it might have been the hippie instinct in me,” she recalls. “It was this huge festival, and I thought it was really unique that you could register to vote.
“I was proud of the people going up there and that the people of my generation believed we could make a change this time.”
Voting, she saw, wasn’t just something people’s grandparents did. In this least likely of places, she glimpsed that there was more to being young and on your own than keg parties and rock ’n’ roll.
HeadCount says it registered 1,145 voters at the festival.
Hayley soon found herself paying closer attention to news. She kept up with the candidates through the headlines on Yahoo, particularly the ones about Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
Gas prices were siphoning a full quarter of her waitressing income. But she didn’t like Sen. John McCain’s plan for more offshore oil drilling. She remembered hearing about the 1969 spill in Santa Barbara, when oil spewed from a drilling-related rupture in the ocean floor and “affected a lot of animals.”
Whereas politics rarely came up before, now, says Nick, who is torn between Obama and McCain, “we butt heads.”
When local TV broadcast a story about the deadly July 27 shooting at a Knoxville church, the couple spent dinner arguing over whether stricter gun laws might have prevented it. (She said yes; he, no.)
On a range of issues, she decided, Obama was most likely to “put change in the White House.”
“Now that college is over, I want to vote, knowing it does count,” she says. “Hopefully we’ll get this country back on the right track.”
* * *
On Aug. 1, before an evening shift at the restaurant, Hayley voted for the first time. Tennessee was picking a Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, and Hayley drove to the county elections office to vote for Bob Tuke, a candidate her grandfather had recommended.
“Yea! Yea!” she said after the electronic voting machine flashed a message that her choice had been recorded. “Am I done?” she asked no one in particular, as if surprised at how little fuss was required.
Hayley has resumed her search for a job in her field. ESPN would be her dream, but anything that blended her interests in sports and media, she concedes, would be great.
She knows that Obama’s chances in Tennessee in November are slim. Tennesseans voted Republican in four of the six last presidential elections, and in the latest poll of state voters, released in late September, McCain led Obama 58 percent to 39 percent.
All the same, she says, she will enter the voting booth Nov. 4 undaunted.
“You never tell anyone, ‘Don’t play because there’s no way you can win,’ ” she says, with a sports metaphor. “If you don’t shoot, you can’t score, you know what I mean?”
Comments
2. AWC | 10.14.08
I really enjoyed reading this article. The young woman seems to have learned a lot recently, as she begins to mature in her attitudes. I’m just sorry that she received poor advising, or else ignored good advising, about how to prepare for her adult life. Presently, all she has is a degree from a local-reputation educational institution, with a barely useful major in an over-crowded field.
3. Beth | 10.14.08
I disagree about our educational system. She got some very important skills in communication, our economy just isn’t letting her put them to use, similar story in other fields as well (including medicine and law). I’ve also been a grad teaching assistant and see students that didn’t know their life goals by 22, but don’t assume that is the case for this bright young woman. You go girl, vote your ethics!
4. Kevin McGuire | 10.14.08
I graduated from college in 1989 and had a similar experience. The economy was poor, and the farm crisis was destroying our family farms. I took a job that covered the expenses and that was about it. But I worked hard and at times took cuts to work at the jobs that I thought would get me ahead. I never thought anyone owed me anything. I did not look to the government to help me. I grew up in a home that helped themselves. At one time I was lost my job and didn’t apply for unemployment because I don’t believe that the government is suppose to solve my problems. Now almost 20 years later, I own my own business and do well.
I hope that others will understand that it is the person’s own hard work and perseverance that give them prosperity not the Government!
5. Andrew W. | 10.14.08
Calling her the Poster Child for what is wrong with Education in America is pretty harsh. We have no idea from this story, beyond her first year or so, how good of a student she finally turned out to be. The internships she got into indicate that she got pretty serious about her education. And her choice to pursue education in a field that interested her shouldn’t be held against her, nor should the fact that society in general has bought off on the concept that a college degree is necessary for success. In fact, try finding a decent job without one. As far as the educational system being dumbed down, I don’t disagree - the education system is rife with students who don’t know where they are going in life, and the quality of education isn’t terribly impressive, but that’s a direct result of anybody and everybody feeling the need to pursue their own American dream, by getting the degree that has become the prerequisite to average, everyday success. But in this day and age, getting that degree is a bit of a gamble. After four years, who knows what the economy will do, or how much your field of education will still be in demand? And don’t even bother trying to find a job that requires education in a different field than your own - HR personnel tend to be very reluctant (or not allowed) to think outside the box.
6. David | 10.14.08
I hope things turn around soon for Hayley. She deserves better. High school counselors, parents, etc should give her better advice including a cost/benefit analysis and a loan payback vs college major job outlook. I have nothing against the less quantitative majors but be very sure you will have a job when major in something like Communicaitons or Journalism. Science majors, math majors, nursing majors, etc are snatched by the job markets routinely year in year out.
If a student is considering hefty student loans (which cannot be forgiven any more), be sure you have a very marketable major with a vast and deep job market. Many professions are recession proof - teaching, nursing, etc. Many students would be better off to tap local community colleges for the first two years - a great place to save money, explore options and take care of prereqs - while maybe avoiding the college extension to high school and junior partying:-) My wife and 2 daughters went that route and all three are now in medical professions.
I wish her the very best in her future endeavors. While she is still so young and has so many recent college credits, she could return to school and become a nurse, teacher or some other high demand profession within a year or two.
7. Jae In (Maryland) | 10.15.08
It is hard to judge an entire educational system based upon one representative sample. I graduated in 1997 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. Didn’t get my dream job with NASA, but found work with the Lockheed Martin. After three years working as a defense contractor, I realized that I didn’t want to work in the field anymore. Jumped fields and worked three years in the computer industry. Long story short, I now work as a Civil Engineer designing roads and highways. How was I able to jump from one engineering field after another you ask? Because I had a college degree. People should think of a college degree like a drivers license. It doesn’t guarantee that you will drive a Porshce, but it does allow you to drive and get from point A to point B.
8. Max | 10.15.08
I think this gril is lucky, and most of the Americans are lucky too. They do have choice or vote right for the country’s president. If you guys were living in China now ,you will find that you didnt know what the election is.
I am 28 years already but i didnt vote for our president even for once. I do really want a choice to do so but the government and society wont give the choice to me and most of chinese people.
I am quite agree with Kevin McGuire’s point!
9. john m | 10.15.08
I read your story about Hayley & felt some grief for her. I’m from the other side of the Pacific in NE Oz & voting here is compulsory from age 18. It always amazes me that a country like yours that espouses democracy doesn’t always allow everybody the right to vote. At age 18 here it is register to vote and make sure you do. Conscious objectors are allowed not to. Mind you you get those who register an invalid ie donkey vote but by and large everybody votes. And no 2 year campaigns.Ye gods what a joke. And the value of dollars you need to run a campaign. However it is your system and you are happy with it. Or are you???
The other pointer is the wage she gets paid - $2.13 an hour. While our dollar is at present lower than yours lving costs are roughly the same though the mixture of how those costs add up is very different. If you were an employer here paying that low rate you would be in jail. And some that tried it in 2007 under laws that the then govt tried to bring in are. The government got wipped out at the nov elections. America needs to pay its workers a fair and equitable wage.
Still as I said earlier it is your country and you have the mechanisms to change what you want to do.
Good on you Hayley for not giving up and keep on trying. I am at the other end of the age scale and was out of work for so long till my current employer took me on. Your white knight will arrive one day too.
jm
10. Carl | 10.15.08
National minimum wage is $6.55/hr. How is her employer exempt? Or is there more to her wage story that’s not told??? You’ll get the wage you are worth, or the wage you’ll settle for… so if you are worth more, than don’t settle for less… FIND ANOTHER JOB!!! WORK HARD!!! PROVE YOU’RE WORTH MORE!!! OR, Open your own business and pay your workers more, it must be easy to make money if you’re in business… because its VERY POPULAR to tax business’s more!! Isn’t it??
11. Jay | 10.15.08
Being a libertarian is like being a vegetarian in a butcher shop. Our country runs under a national government, simple as that. Get off your high horse, stand up for one side of an issue and pick a candidate. Don’t waste our time with your anti-government ramblings.
12. tina | 10.15.08
Too much partying, college drop-out, then, like Obama, she expresses her opinion that she was taught by the mainstream media opinion. Another dummy for Obama. Very sad.
13. Get_Involved | 10.15.08
Anyone who thinks government doesn’t matter OBVIOUSLY isn’t paying attention to the number of corporate lobbyists. And if the citizens of this country are spoiled because we think that our tax dollars should help secure our national interest by encouraging American scientists to discover an alternative to fossil fuels, then call me spoiled. I guess the “boot strap” mentality is to continue to give our tax dollars to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Russia so we can help ourselves to their oil. How progressive.
Whether you want to admit or not… GOVERNMENT started this war in Iraq. GOVERNMENT caused this financial meltdown that GOVERNMENT now wants you to pay extra for. GOVERNMENT takes your Social Security taxes and now wants you to just consider it a taxable donation. So you can pretend that GOVERNMENT is going to stop forcing you to fund it or you can wake up and demand something from GOVERNMENT in return. We can afford to pay Iraqi citizens NOT to shoot at us, but we can’t afford to give hard-working US citizens access to preventative health care? Oh yeah, I forgot, GOVERNMENT prefers to step in after the illness has been ignored so long it’s 10 times more expensive to treat because that’s a better deal for the corporations and the lobbyists.
I’m not an idealist, I am a realist. Look around you and tell me what may have been different if Bush were not elected. Don’t ever forget that a lot of people understand the importance of voting and of government. And they are more than happy to see you become complacent about getting involved thereby letting them continue to have their way. Government won’t change until the citizens demand change. And you can’t demand anything when you refuse to participate in the process.
This young lady should be commended. She educated herself on policy rather than just making a decision because she’s scared of someone’s middle name. That “my friends” is EXACTLY who should be allowed vote.
@TBE - tips ARE considered income and they ARE taxable as such. It looks like you should spend more time educating yourself instead of trying to insult someone who is actively doing it.
14. Reagan Dumbocrat | 10.15.08
I recall my first voting experience: McGovern. Obama reminds me … ‘Change’ so over-worn and speaks of an ability to flip-flop, or mearely change for change’s sake. I’ve swapped emails with him on illegal/legal immigration. He could’t recognize that the abuse of the H1B visa cost me my job. Yawn … I’m tired of promoting Obama as an underdog and recognize him as the ‘angry black man’ that his past are starting to reveal. His wife wears that cap well. Her supressed writings prove it. Some folks want to punish America and go overseas to announce it. Having been very pro-active in civil rights, I can tell the difference between a humble man seeking a dream vs. an angry militant wearing a suit getting in my face. Obama plays on young voters ideals to promote a stealth agenda. Nothing new. Been there, and learned that political youth appeal works against better judgement. Take time to ferret out a sincere servant vs. another talking head representing ‘a people’ and promoting democratic socialism. Freedom is worth a second chance.
15. Colleen | 10.15.08
Please give us more of this type of story. We all need to hear about the struggles of people like us.
Hayley, I suggest you do some more research on oil spills and the ripple effects of such events. For example, the
Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the impact it had on the local economy from which hundreds of people and
businesses never recovered, not to mention the wildlife. And why is Exxon still in business?
16. Steve | 10.15.08
‘Tis a shame… A college degree and no job. Not the first and definitely not the last. I completed my MBA in ‘93. My first job paid me $8.25/hour… Satisfied? Not quite… I’ve worked my way up thru several different jobs into a decent salary. Keep working, Haley.
As for her fears about off-shore drilling, compare the accidents with the successes… Don’t focus on one or 2 bad events… The BIG picture is what’s important. We have the resources… We shouldn’t be relying on foreign oil to fuel us… We also need to work more toward alternatives.
As for the political end, I’m sorry to read that she’s been hypnotized by OB’s smooth talking… You think things are bad now?? Just watch what happens if he gets into the Whitehouse. Well said, Reagan Dumbocrat …
17. Joe Heim | 10.15.08
Well Hayley Colley positioned herself as a victim in the reality show called life. What’s she has in her favor is age and as she grows up maybe she will make decisions more to her benefit!
As a job coach, I recommend that Hayley’s first step is to promote herself as the best as what she currently does “waitressing”! Then she’ll reap the monetary benefits that a quality waitress can earn… since the job she has is tip driven which is the reason for the low hourly rate.
The second suggestion I have for Hayley is to put politics and religion aside and concentrate on her individual skills and abilities. If politics and religion are her priorities then I recommend that she look into being a community organizer… I think Acorn would be happy to send her an apllication.
18. joseph | 10.15.08
There are some incredibly cruel posts here, and (surprise, surprise) they’re all from Republicans. Are you people born hating the human race, or do you just develop those tendencies over time?
19. LC | 10.15.08
Attention CARL!!!!! All service staff in most states are only required to be paid a minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. This is different than regular minimum wage as these service staff receive tips. I suggest you know what you are talking about, before you speak. Maybe this tendency of yours, is in some way, proof of this faulty education system your peers keep citing???? Rock on Joseph. It does appear that some of the Republicans that would like to suggest that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even when they do not have any boots to begin with, are born hating the human race. Good luck Hayley. Keep up the amazing work with your life. It will all work out. As George Michael would say, have “Faith” and as Obama would say, have “HOPE”!!!!
21. Charlotte | 10.16.08
What is it with Republicans? Why are they so mean spirited? You can be pro-McCain without being anti-Obama, can’t you? Stop being such haters. Hayley’s awakening to civic pride,responsibility and involvement is inspirational no matter who she votes for. I hope she gets a job in her field soon.
22. vlf | 10.16.08
Since Hayley Colley registered to vote at a rock concert instead of her county’s elections office, she needs to check to see if she’s actually registered to vote. If she doesn’t she may get a surprise at her polling place Nov. 4.
23. Nick | 10.16.08
Hayley registered to vote at a rock concert because that’s where she saw people like her taking that step. There are many organizations who promote at concerts. Props to them. Read the article a little closer before you decide to comment. She already voted. Her card is obviously the real deal. Commenting like that by Ulf could scare other young would-be voters from registering at concerts when it is entirely legit. Go get em’ Hayley. Don’t ever listen to anybody as close minded as Tina. Satan himself could be running for office and if he was a republican, Tina would vote for him.
24. shelley | 10.17.08
hey check out #12 Tina. what an idiot! did she even read the article? WOW she is a perfect example of why Bush was elected twice.
25. Kate | 10.18.08
The reason she gets paid so little, for those who want to know, is waitress’ tips are considered part of their income in a lot of US midwestern states, so they consider her to be making $6 and some change. It’s still not fair though. It’s hard to make it, and waitressing is one of those positions you can put in a little time, but a lot of hard work, and make a decent amount of money.
26. Maz | 10.20.08
Quit harshing on Hayley! She sounds like she’s getting her act together and becoming more politically aware. The job market is rough these days for recent college grads; I wish her the best of luck in finding a good, interesting, and reasonably well-paying job.
27. Mary A | 10.26.08
I also graduated in the late 80’s and within four months of graduating with honors from an elite, private East Coast university, I was a secretary. I realized that my skill set was very interesting but the only reason anyone would actually pay me money in that faltering economy was because I could type! It was a big dose of reality. Whose fault was it? Mine - I studied what I was interested in and figured that surely I’d find a job doing something equally interesting. While it was my choice, I really didn’t have the maturity then to listen to advice or do anything differently. Hayley has come out the other side of her college education in much the same situation and a similar economy. I hope times have changed enough that Hayley has not encountered the sexism I did - guys my age with similar credentials and typing skills who I encountered in my early years of job searching never were offered secretarial positions.
Looking back the only thing I think would have helped would have been taking a gap year — as is increasingly common in Europe — either between HS and college or after the first two years of college and rather than backpack around the world, actually intern or work an entry-level job in one’s field of interest. That would give a young person the real-world experience to go back to school and hopefully make some more insightful decisions to focus his/her studies on preparing for the real world after college rather than focusing on just getting the diploma.
28. Tony | 11.05.08
Hey Nick, Satan did run for office as a Republican, and I bet Tina did vote for him twice.
As for Hayley, I would advise that she use her skills as an Electronic Media Journalist to start writing independently online and then pitch her writing samples to websites that may be interested in publishing her work.
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1. Merlin Brooks | 10.14.08
From highschool waitress to college grad waitress - a sad story about our dumbed-down educational system. She would have been much better off in a community college developing some serious job skills. She is a Poster Child with what is wrong with Education in America. College used to be thought of as a place of higher learning. We need to get back to that concept, and not give false hopes to the under-qualified. This is not a new problem, as I encountered it as a grad student teaching at the Univ. of Washington way back in 1963. Most of the students then just didn’t get it - drifting through.