AMHERST – A fall several months ago left Hampshire College sophomore Eduardo Samaniego with significant pain for which his doctor prescribed Oxycontin.
Even as he recovered and the pain subsided, Samaniego, 23, a native of Mexico, said he found out firsthand how easy it could be to become addicted to painkillers.
“Addiction is so common, but people are ashamed, or keep themselves from sharing,” Samaniego said.
Raising concerns about dealing with the opioid crisis, Samaniego was one of 18 local college students invited to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Friday afternoon to meet with state Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, and state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow, for what is being called the Millennial Engagement Initiative.
The outreach is an effort to learn what is on the minds of younger voters and how they can be better included in the political process.
“We are trying to get a deeper understanding of what young people are concerned about today,” Rosenberg said. “Without your engagement, we’re not going to get it right.”
The six students from UMass and three each from Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges discussed a range of issues, from sexual assaults,judicial reform, immigration and the environment to college affordability and confusing and antiquated state voting rules that often leave them on the sidelines during elections.
Junior Katie Hitchcock-Smith, 21, of Brookline, the founder of a bipartisan coalition at Smith College aiming to bring perspectives from various political viewpoints, said the Legislature needs to have a priority of making more services available for survivors of rape.
“We have to focus on people getting comfortable to report it,” Hitchcock-Smith said. “There’s not a lot of support out there.”
Lesser said a sexual assault bill of rights is currently making its way through the Legislature.
Amherst College senior Andrew Lindsay said he would like to see politicians focus on reducing incarceration rates and crime, possibly through use of diversion programs.
“Is Massachusetts going to be moving in that type of direction?” asked Lindsay, 21, from Jamaica. “I worry that a lot of people will be on parole and probation.”
“The short answer is we’re behind a lot of the country on this,” Rosenberg said.
But the recent opioid legislation, Rosenberg said, should reduce the number of people going to prison who are addicted to drugs.
“Substance abuse is a disease, not a crime,” Rosenberg said. “If you show up at the police station because you’re sick, you shouldn’t be sent to jail.”
UMass senior Mentewab Kebede, 21, said she recently was overseas assisting Syrians at a refugee camp and hopes state officials, including Gov. Charlie Baker, will be more receptive to immigrants.
“They are some of the most resilient people I’ve ever seen,” said Kebede, who is from Ethiopia.
Rosenberg said Syrian refugees will be welcome in Massachusetts, adding that “we have a program to help people become citizens more quickly, most states don’t do that.”
Lesser said the session was the second roundtable, with future ones scheduled in Quincy and Fall River, which has a 23-year-old mayor.
Following the session, student participants seemed happy to be able to speak directly to legislators.
“I feel like a lot more conversation will develop from this,” Samaniego said.
“It gave me a really great feeling to be in a room with about 20 other people my age who are defying the belief that there is political apathy among youth,” Kebede said.
Rosenberg said he saw articulate young people who are thinking outside the box, and appreciated the focused discussion on sexual assaults.
He said there will be challenges, though, to make voting easier.
“That’s really concerning, yet there’s huge resistance to these kind of changes,” Rosenberg said.
Lesser said he is not yet ready to commit to any ideas that came out, but will begin compiling themes from these sessions.
“The point of this is to get some very concrete proposals out there and have them all lead to legislation,” Lesser said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
