On April 4th, as a student of the CAP Global Citizens stream, I attended the Coordinated Arts Program Annual Conference. There were panels and showcases of the five different streams all represented. It was particularly interesting to the students from different streams coming together for creating a panel collaboratively.

Among others, I attended “Panel C: Global Power and Local Politics”. It started off with our fellow classmate, David How’s “Raise the Vote: Addressing the Youth Voter Crisis” pitch. For his presentation, I put on my Political Science 100 hat reminding myself of the different possible relationship between the state and its citizens and where the act of voting resides in democracy. The background knowledge I had cultivated in my Political Science class was critical in my ability to point out not just the importance of raising the youth voter by the number but by the consciousness and attitude towards politics.

The next presenter was Paul Andre Narvestad from the PPE stream who talked about the consequences of “The Faceless Drone: the Alienation of Soldiers in War by the Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”. I was already familiar with this issue but his presentation brought to light a new perspective towards the issue for myself. After considering the technological advancement that allows for the existence for both the seemingly virtual reality and the real reality that drones  present, I immediately thought about video games and movies circulating that glorifies war. Using a conflict theoretical approach, I thought of war as a business enterprise. They are efficient in selling war by means of weapons and popular culture, concurrently making sure that the war itself is running efficiently with drones.

The third panel was that of Cara Chuang also from the PPE stream who discussed the struggle in the dual existence of sovereignty and globalization in “Sovereignty Transformed”. This was also a topic familiar to myself as I have learned in Geography 122 course about the global implication of globalization. Globalization, along with its many benefits, can often unify many tradition and worse of, assimilate it to the hegemonic power.

Now, as to serve the purpose of this post as a summary of the year, I was content that I was able to make the various connections to the conference materials to my other courses. And along the lines of what was discussed in Cara Chuang’s presentation of the ramification of globalization, I realized that the act of engaging with these ideas was a sign of practicing conscious global citizenship. At the beginning of the year, when asked about what global citizenship meant to myself, I gave the answer somewhere along the lines of, “Being capable of making decisions and to be engaged with global affairs”. Although I still agree with what I said, I would also like to add that global citizenship starts with realizing where I stand in terms of privilege and social standing. And understanding that the values I hold is not necessarily of the benefit of others and more importantly, globalization is not always a glorifying concept. By comprehending your own standing in relations to others around. I believe global citizenship is to advocate for local and global engagement whether it be in the public discourse such as this conference.